Feedback Version 1.181

[Bearius23]

Yes, some things are harder for new players while others are easier. They are constantly balancing things so I'd keep giving feedback to help to make the game better. Also, it's a challenging game so if you have any questions about things that are hard, there's always a lot of help here.

Thanks. I do have some very helpful advanced players in my FS. That's not a problem. But a helpful and insightful FS does not give me more CCs or pet food. And I'm not trying to be snarky, but I can't think of a single aspect of this game that has gotten harder for me from one chapter to the next. In some areas it has stayed the same, in others it has gotten easier with each chapter. To be fair, though, I'm only in the Elvenar chapter.

 

[Dhurrin]

That's how RNG works, that's why we need to keep a safety buffer because there are times when pet food doesn't show up. There's roughly 6 pet food per week that appear in the MA on average. The key word is average, it means over a period of time with variations. I've been happily using 6.3 pet food per week for over a year and lately even 7.3 per week when my balance increased to 40 pet food. The safety buffer is very important.

Also, even when we log in every 12 hrs, we can check all four MA rotations. We can use one Sips of Clarity or disconnect the MA to align it to the time we want. Pet food is in the far right slot, so we need to make sure that we don't craft anything in there through rotation to keep it open.

Hmmm...we seem to have a communication problem here. I hear what you say, but you seem to miss my point here.

I am talking about the fact I have several players inside my own FS, on different servers, who DO NOT get even an average of 2 offers to craft petfood a week. Not one week or a few weeks with few offers, but a long-term (9+ weeks) average of 1-2 petfood a week. Week after week. I know one player who is retired and is online a lot, so doesn't miss a lot of offers and still only saw 20 offers in 3 months, which translates to just over 1 per week. There is no way anyone can build up a stock that way.

We can talk about building up a stock, to work around fluctuations, but that doesn't work if you're just not getting the offers to craft them. Not everyone gets the same offers, or gets them at the same intervals. But if you just do not get the offers there is not much one can do about it.

 

[Dhurrin]

Yes, some things are harder for new players while others are easier. They are constantly balancing things so I'd keep giving feedback to help to make the game better. Also, it's a challenging game so if you have any questions about things that are hard, there's always a lot of help here.

With the caveat that Inno seems to use a definition of 'balancing' that is not found in any dictionary. Or that they are just incredibly bad at it.

For old-time players things get easier and easier, especially with long times between the chapters as it gives them time to pile up resources. But for newer players there are a lot of problems.
@Bearius23 is right in the observation that there are very, very few possibilities to catch up for newer players.

 

[Silly Bubbles]

With the caveat that Inno seems to use a definition of 'balancing' that is not found in any dictionary. Or that they are just incredibly bad at it.

Or incredibly good at it. They are one of the most successful gaming companies, I'm quite sure that they know what they are doing better than any of us. Otherwise, we would start our own gaming company and be better at it than Inno. Perfection doesn't exists, it's constant fine tuning.

 

[Darielle]

Or incredibly good at it. They are one of the most successful gaming companies, I'm quite sure that they know what they are doing better than any of us. Otherwise, we would start our own gaming company and be better at it than Inno. Perfection doesn't exists, it's constant fine tuning.

Serious downsizing, and having to lay off 75 out of 400 employees in a single year does not sound like the most successful gaming company, unless that is the definition of success nowadays ... lean and mean. I prefer the old way of doing business, where employees were thought of as family and, once you hired them, you did everything you could to avoid laying them off. In those days, you didn't hire someone unless you thought you could keep them. Nowadays employees are just treated as contract workers even if they are supposed to be regular. Keep them and use them, and then discard them when needed for the bottom line. I do agree that Inno has done more than the minimum, legally, for their employees, and allowed them a transition time with reduced salary. Some companies will not do that so I'm not entirely upset with them. But it was still a shock to quite a few of those 75 employees, and I don't consider that a truly successful company. Just my humble opinion.

 

[Darielle]

Hmmm...we seem to have a communication problem here. I hear what you say, but you seem to miss my point here.

I am talking about the fact I have several players inside my own FS, on different servers, who DO NOT get even an average of 2 offers to craft petfood a week. Not one week or a few weeks with few offers, but a long-term (9+ weeks) average of 1-2 petfood a week. Week after week. I know one player who is retired and is online a lot, so doesn't miss a lot of offers and still only saw 20 offers in 3 months, which translates to just over 1 per week. There is no way anyone can build up a stock that way.

We can talk about building up a stock, to work around fluctuations, but that doesn't work if you're just not getting the offers to craft them. Not everyone gets the same offers, or gets them at the same intervals. But if you just do not get the offers there is not much one can do about it.

That reminds me of the 200 percent offers or even 100 percent sales on diamonds. Everyone else says to wait for the sales, it's rng, but I've been here for almost 4 years and I have never ... not once .... gotten a 200 percent or even a 100 percent offer. Nichts, nada, nothing. So "it's random" doesn't really help me. I don't believe it is random. I believe it's because my dear son bought me diamonds at regular price when I first came onto the game ... as a surprise for me. I do believe that once you buy diamonds at regular price, you are doomed to never get a decent sale ever. Not random ... deliberate. They feel that if you cough up once, you'll do it again.

They've got me pegged so wrong. They could have made hundreds on me by now, but I will never buy diamonds, just on the principle of the thing, because they won't give me the offers. Shortsighted. And I believe it's also shortsighted to deny some players pet food while others get them. Their rng could be handled a whole lot better than it is. They could program in a basic minimum that it never goes below, so that everyone gets at least a basic amount, better than it is currently.

 

[Count Rupert]

That reminds me of the 200 percent offers or even 100 percent sales on diamonds. Everyone else says to wait for the sales, it's rng, but I've been here for almost 4 years and I have never ... not once .... gotten a 200 percent or even a 100 percent offer. Nichts, nada, nothing. So "it's random" doesn't really help me. I don't believe it is random. I believe it's because my dear son bought me diamonds at regular price when I first came onto the game ... as a surprise for me. I do believe that once you buy diamonds at regular price, you are doomed to never get a decent sale ever. Not random ... deliberate. They feel that if you cough up once, you'll do it again.

They've got me pegged so wrong. They could have made hundreds on me by now, but I will never buy diamonds, just on the principle of the thing, because they won't give me the offers. Shortsighted. And I believe it's also shortsighted to deny some players pet food while others get them. Their rng could be handled a whole lot better than it is. They could program in a basic minimum that it never goes below, so that everyone gets at least a basic amount, better than it is currently.

For those willing to shell out the bucks at regular prices it's a way of thanking them for their support to occasionally offer them a sale. A customer appreciation sale. Taking those who are willing to spend money for granted can be dangerous.

 

[Henroo]

Was anything removed from the list of crafting recipies to compensate for the new additions? And if so, what was taken out?

 

[Pheryll]

Was anything removed from the list of crafting recipies to compensate for the new additions? And if so, what was taken out?

On Beta, it was mentioned that nothing was removed.

 

[Henroo]

On Beta, it was mentioned that nothing was removed.

Then this is a negative change. I would not mind it so much had they kept the number of options neutral. I regard the light melee, heavy range, and heavy melee buildings as a solid plus, but it looks like they will be harder to get because the number of overall crafting options has increased. And the cost of the new 1 square buildings is insane. For example, 4 RRs to craft a Blue Amaryllis Field. I have never placed the ones I won for free in the original event, why would I ever sacrifice 4 RRs to make another?

 

[Moho]

Then this is a negative change.

I agree. And I'm sure they're aware of all the negative consequences but probably they're supposed to choose between offering a "slightly" unfriendlier game or no game at all.

 

[crackie]

Secondly, this game is already not very friendly to new players. From essentially grandfathered building options (e.g., bunches of Moonstone Library buildings) that newer players can never match to very little in the way of catch-up mechanics that many games institute once they're a few years old. We've got to dump diamonds essentially just to catch up with what many players were able to acquire just by playing events (Fire Phoenix, Polar & Brown Bear). I was dismayed when some of my FS mentors were debating some of those older building combos (how many library buildings and others they really need) because they are swimming in Combining Catalysts (CCs). I have to craft CCs in the MA regularly. I'm not even going to get into the time factor, aside from realizing it will still take multiple years to get to chapter 21 that was just released because catch-up mechanics are really weak with this game.

@Bearius23 You're not wrong. However, this is a very open-ended game and a player can play it with varying focus on different goals. While it does stink, it isn't a universal problem due to how people choose to set their goals for the game. It hurts some more than others. For example, many players are content to park their cities for various reasons, at different points along the chapter timeline, and therefore, have no interest or desire to ever "catch up" to anyone or anything. Also, in one of my FS, we have many old-timer players at end game who litter the Top 20 rankings for that server. I can tell you most of them don't care to have many Moonstone Lib sets either, even if they have them. It doesn't help their rank tying up so many tiles to Moonstone sets and they aren't short on CCs.

After the game limited Moonstones to 1 set per player, they have introduced many other buildings that produce CCs as well (Pilgrim set, Forbidden ruins set, Steam Golem, etc). It's also worthy to note that there was a time where you weren't even able to win buildings/artifacts/bases from past events if you missed the event. While it will cost you handsomely in diamonds to have old buildings for events you missed, at least it is now possible to acquire them, which I concede is some progress and effort on their part. You can also be super patient and try to win all the artifacts from the Spire for free, which can take a few years.

Bottom line, I was already considering whether I wanted to keep playing, or at least keep playing at my current level. Just the temporal distance between myself and my top FS teammates is disheartening.

In the fellowship with giants, I was a new chap 1 city when I joined and the next closest city was already in chapter 12. Half the fellowship or more is already in chapter 21 now, so how is that for a giant chasm in temporal distance? At first, a lot of the older players thought someone in the FS was feeding me goods is how I am able to do full Spire and that much tourney, but the reality was more that I'm just a veteran player that started a new city who more or less know what I'm doing. I am limited to 1 Moonstone Set, never have enough spell frags, and experience all those restrictions of a new city, but you just solve the problems and play things differently than my other cities that have 7 Moonstones and further along. It took me a crap ton of diamonds/blueprints to get my Fire Phoenix, Brown Bear, and Polar Bear to lvl 10, but to be honest, I haven't even fed them yet. It doesn't have to be disheartening to be so far behind. I have fun and lean into it by constantly threatening and trash talking the other bottom feeders on Page 3 of the roster with me. Nobody is actually scared. I'm now 8 chapters behind the next smallest city. However, it has incentivized the former 2nd smallest city to jump 2 spots to get away from me.

 

[Flashfyre]

The claims that having bought diamonds for full-price makes you ineligible for a sale is false; I just saw a 200% diamond offer a week or so ago in my Fely city (the one I've been playing for years) and I have bought diamonds in that one multiple times, both on sale and not. In fact, the largest purchase I made was a full-price one to get enough diamonds to buy the Garden Party for 6500. IIRC, that was the $80USD bundle.

 

[Katwick]

Serious downsizing, and having to lay off 75 out of 400 employees in a single year does not sound like the most successful gaming company

You're overlooking an important factor. Many gaming companies added extra employees so that they could keep up with the Covid stay-at-home reality.

Now that folks are out and about again, the demand has softened and growth has retreated to normal levels.

While there's nothing that indicates exactly where employees were surplused, several of Innogames' other titles are producing better margins.

 

[Bearius23]

Or incredibly good at it. They are one of the most successful gaming companies, I'm quite sure that they know what they are doing better than any of us. Otherwise, we would start our own gaming company and be better at it than Inno. Perfection doesn't exists, it's constant fine tuning.

I'm super curious what benchmark or criteria you're using to claim "one of the most successful gaming companies". Personal experience is not analyzable data, but my anecdote is that I had never heard of them until I happened to get a bug in my brain to search for possible fantasy genre city-building games. It may be different in other regions, but in the U.S. I've never seen a single ad for their games.

 

[Iyapo]

@Bearius23

https://venturebeat.com/business/innogames-rises-from-humble-german-hobbyist-roots-to-1-1-billion-in-lifetime-revenue/

https://gameworldobserver.com/2021/03/04/mobile-publisher-innogames-hits-record-breaking-revenue-266-million-2020

Here are a few benchmarks


Edit to add: I am also from the US and can not believe you never saw a Tribal Wars ad. That game was stupidly popular.

 

[Lelanya]

Yep, Tribal Wars or Forge of Empires "build your city now".

 

[Darielle]

You're overlooking an important factor. Many gaming companies added extra employees so that they could keep up with the Covid stay-at-home reality.

Now that folks are out and about again, the demand has softened and growth has retreated to normal levels.

While there's nothing that indicates exactly where employees were surplused, several of Innogames' other titles are producing better margins.

That's a good point.

 

[Silly Bubbles]

So far I'm getting more pet food than ever before so thank you for that.
I'm still not sure about military boosts buildings, that might take a couple of weeks to see how that goes.

 

[Dhurrin]

Or incredibly good at it. They are one of the most successful gaming companies, I'm quite sure that they know what they are doing better than any of us. Otherwise, we would start our own gaming company and be better at it than Inno. Perfection doesn't exists, it's constant fine tuning.

You confuse different things. A company doing well does not automatically mean it's products or service are great. You only have to look at the F35 for that and there is a list as long as the Great Wall of China with other examples.

I am not saying the game isn't good, it is. But almost every aspect of Inno's 'balancing' stuff in Elvenar has led to pretty significant issues and pretty significant numbers of players either quitting or taking a break because their 'balancing' generally sucks.

And the point @Bearius23 was making was that there are very, very few opportunities for new players to catch up on older event buildings.
Saying that the company is making a lot of money doesn't change that. In fact, it is an absolute non-argument in that discussion