Design Spotlight: Event System!

[Nathan Win]

Thanks for the insight Morgan. I do appreciate and enjoy all the events you guys put out. The conquest event was hard to achieve since I don't have time to raid that much; only achieve 80 out 150 wins for IA. Regardless, I welcome any events. Don't let these negative forum posters complaining about the event discourage you guys. I'm sure you guys will improve the events in the future. I'll look forward to the next event.

 

[leoelephant]

So far I like all the events. The last one is super tough for i only play after work. I managed 100 win before last day mostly at weekend. As there is no global age and I donot want miss any new content, I managed to played three hours in a row and get 50 win and finally claim the reward just 5 min before end.... Very very exhausting

 

[Which]

I have enjoyed the events and all, the conquest event was really grindy and feels like there wasn't enough (if any) play testing done prior to setting the conditions of completing the event.

Eg. Industrial players need 150 wins, Enlightenment 120, and as you go down the ages, fewer wins is needed which makes the content more accessible to all players and less demanding on the new players, balanced, right?

Not.

An industrial army needs at least 40m+ of production time if you were to take on a base of enlightenment/industrial level, and the average battle length of a match is at least 2m30s.
assuming you are skilled and only lose your army and have to retain every 5 wins, you are looking at
40m + 2m30s x 5 + Search time to find the right base(say 30s per battle) x 5 = 55mins per 5 wins

So if this pattern continues, it would take the very skilled player 1650 minutes = 27.5 hours to complete the challenge.

This is being very generous on the assumption of time.

On the other hand, for a gunpowder age player, they only have to complete a total of 90 wins
The average production time for a gunpowder age army is only 20mins and each battle takes about 2 mins.

This averages out to 9 hours to complete the challenge, which is 3 times less than an industrial player.

This puts most players in a situation where they are just looking for bases where they can drop a few units and take the town centre for a quick victory.
And excludes the top players because they spend 10m+ searching for a single match and they have to win 150 to complete the event.
They literally have to be playing 8 hours a day to have a chance of completing the event.


I'm pretty sure this is not the intent of the event.


A simple fix could've been: stars or medals instead of wins??

TLR: did not play test, ended up with a shitty event that pissed off a lot of players.


Event, aside, could the devs redirect their attention to bug fixes before adding in future events?

I repost my list of known bugs for your easy follow up,



List of known bugs



General

1) Graphic bug with forests - trees from an uncleared forest sometimes show up on a random location, such as in the river or under the alliance gate, it is probably caused by a wrong orientation or setting of your 3D model of the forest.
http://postimg.org/image/7fufmgju7/


2) Graphic bug (NEW BUG AS OF v 3.5.x) - Destroyed buildings appears as duds when they are in fact ruins.
http://postimg.org/image/4bl6zt7et/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz_qCxFpMIU




Alliance & World War

1) Crashing of the game after pressing attack in world war, losing an attack attempt.


2) Some alliances shows 49 members, but is unable to accept the 50th member (an error saying the alliance is full).
(RESOLVED)

3) Foreign Text support on world war history page.
http://postimg.org/image/pfne5dszn/


4) Implement a function so the scroll bar is scroll-able instead of being a visual effect (battle log screen).


5) Battle log screen, please sort the battle records so that the latest battles are on top instead of the other way around.


6) Troop donations - sometimes players are unable to request for a full amount of their alliance troop capacity/the requested troop amount on alliance chat seems to not be in sync with the actual amount that the play is currently requesting, please investigate.


Combat


1) Encounted a bug where units are able to bypass walls and stuck within a wall. (did not notice prior to the ninja event)


2) Encounted a bug where a player was attacked by two players at the same time.
http://postimg.org/image/42kei9k1x

3) Encounted a bug where revenging a player shows that player to be in combat, but a few seconds later, he was not in combat. Please investigate if the revenge system is bugged and is blocking players from being revenged even when they are offline, out of combat and has no peace treaty.


Suggestions - Quality of life improvements


1) Implement a "<" ">" button whist browsing the bases of alliance members, similar to world war.


2) Add attack speed value onto unit/building info.


3) The thumbnail of a building on its upgrade screen always shows its base appearance(level 1). It would be appreciated if the thumbnail instead show its next stage appearance to incentive players.


4) Trade good imbalances - leather is also used least, perhaps a simple balancing act would fix that.


5) Implement a sort function on the alliance roster so it is not just ranked by medals.

 

[IzEagle]

I personally believe the best difficulty level for events is a level which is achievable for at least 50% to 60% of players. In this way the resulting feedback for new features will be more reliable and also more players will have fun with this joyful part of the game.

 

[Yellowmar]

Talk about Domination overdose. I had to win 300 battles. One account was getting no opponent found and the other had one barrack out of commission. Now it is time to enjoy my Khans in his pleasure dome.

 

[leoelephant]

you get great mongol general for both your accounts :O, really? That is amazing, I guess you get much more poison from this game than me.

 

[Martine]

Congrats .. big effort

 

[GailWho]

leoelephant well Yellowmar is the monkey god after all he can do these things

 

[Parmenion]

Congrats!

Hate to be pedantic but orangutans are apes, not moneys. So, Yellowmar is the ape god.

 

[GailWho]

Hmmm... Ape god.... Nah monkey god has a better ring to it (psst... Look closer at my profile pic )

 

[GailWho]

Shoot! Posted to wrong post thingy, this should be comment 15.5 .... Disregard ... This is totally off topic unless we want to add an event with flying monkeys, or monkey wars or something. Carry on... Nothing to see here

 

[GailWho]

Hey... Many have tried to escape the dreaded Zombie apocalypse and many have failed. Most hightail it and run for fear of undead hobbits invading their towns. Fear the Zombies!!!

 

[Parmenion]

Lol, I think I read the text a while back but forget it talked about monkeys. I agree, monkey god does have a better ring to it.

 

[danron1376]

the events have been good. i'd rather have them than not. it is true that the last one was hard to achieve, but i like having the tiered system where you can achieve bonuses along the way. i wonder if people would be interested in having an event with the award being a temporary extra house. maybe a 'mercenary' architect that would increase the housing space temporarily.

 

[Brand Marrow]

Oh Definitely! Would love to have an event bonus that increased building speed!

 

[IzEagle]

As mentioned the event system is a good way for testing new stuff. Why you don’t try a navy unit. It could be a ship with cannons which can help both in offence and defense like generals.

Attack mode: Attacker select the ship and point a target (like air planes); the ship will appear in the river and starts firing. The ship can’t be hit by defense systems but its fire rate is slow and it needs 12hr maintenance after each use. Also the ship can deploys one wave of nation troops from the dock (the count of units is similar to Command Post)

Defense mode: The defender can chose the ship for defense and after each defense it needs 12hr maintenance time. The ship fire at attacking troops (no splash damage) and one wave of nation troops will come from dock for helping in defense.

 

[Brand Marrow]

Nice idea for an initial implementation of naval units! At some point, we should be able to build defensive airplane garrisons and these would be able to target ships. Could also provide a library tech or factory research item for placing a battery on the dock, cannons to fire at attacking ships and invading marines.

 

[Wingless]

I've managed to finish every event.. some more time consuming than others, but the idea is loved! Why not make it a wager system with different rewards... for istance, three tiers, a 10, 20, and 30 crown fee. players gets rewarded for completing the task, but also get there crowns and a half back... like "OVERTIME"- LOL rights reserved!! Anyways by doing this your able to accommodate different levels of players and make more active ones...

 

[Atinyfish1386]

Wow talk about an epic game change how broken will that be?
I think we better stay with what we got