Practice English Speaking&Listening with: Behind the Scenes: Tournament Updates | Elvenar

Rike, what does that mean?

Exactly what you said!

Hey everyone!

Today we are going behind the scenes with our UI Artist Rike, and Andi our Game Designer,

to show you some big upcoming changes that we have planned for the Tournaments.

But, before we get started, make sure to sign up on our Beta servers.

The link is in the description below so that you can try all these changes.

Before we jump into all of the topics we have today,

why don’t you tell us what the main goals are for the Tournament changes, Rike?

So, we actually have four main goals.

The first would be to move away from the repetitive gameplay.

Currently, for one Province you have to do four Encounters

and it adds up a lot when you are active in the Tournaments.

I mean, not only for players that do ten Chests regularly, but even for the casual players that do less.

So, the second goal would be how difficulty is calculated.

We feel that is unfair in many places, especially when it comes to researching the Squad Size Upgrades.

The third goal is that we think we can make the Tournaments easier to understand for new players

because currently it’s quite challenging for early Chapters.

And the fourth and last goal would be great news for Fellowships!

Because we want to add more challenges and rewards for the ones that actually beat the ten Chests.

Sounds like we have a lot to see actually!

So I’d say, let's jump right in with some general improvements and the first one is a big one because...

I will follow up here!

So, we will reduce the amount of Encounters in a Province from four to one.

That means, you click on the Tournament Province and you just immediately get the Encounter window,

but maybe you want to go more into detail about that?

Yeah!

So, we are comparing the amount of clicks that you would use in the old versus the new system.

And on the left, you’re going to see, we are going to solve one Province and just follow what happens on the right,

because you can solve so many more Provinces in the same amount of clicks.

Instead of going into the Province,

you finish the Encounter from the World Map directly and you just continue.

If we are doing four Encounters and one Province, does that change anything?

Well, yes of course!

That means we can’t make the Tournament four times cheaper.

The one big Encounter will actually be balanced accordingly.

So, the previous four Encounters will have about the same cost as the new big Encounter.

The next change is a bit smaller but it will also save some clicks.

Right now on only Browser, when you want to skip the waiting time on a Tournament Province,

you have to move on the World Map, pick and find each Tournament Province

and skip the time there either with Time Boosters or Diamonds.

And what we implemented right now is that you can immediately do it on the Province Overview.

So, no more searching anymore and we finally catch up with Mobile, that had it already.

So, moving on to the next topic, Difficulty Adjustments.

Andi, one of the main issues that we have with the current Tournaments system is that

the optional Squad Size researches can actually be a disadvantage in the Tournament.

How do you plan to address this?

There will be a complete rework.

Currently we focus only on the player's Squad Size.

So, both how much you pay in the Catering as well as how strong the enemies are,

is based on the Squad Size research you did in the Research Tree.

This means that doing optional research can actually hurt your Tournament progress.

So, we move away completely from player Squad Size.

This means your Squad Size won’t have any effect anymore on how difficult a Tournament is.

Instead, we will incorporate a lot of different factors,

that are more realistic about how far you have progressed in the game.

The main idea about it is that every single factor is contributing less to the costs

than it is contributing to your own strength.

So, if in fact it makes you 10% stronger, then the cost will maybe only increase by 5%.

This means that there is no way that you can do something wrong,

you cannot accidentally build something which helps you less than it actually increases the costs.

What about the disparity between Catering and Battles?

What do we plan to do about that?

So, the Catering costs will be lowered significantly,

because we saw that a lot of players do a lot of Battles, but once you start Catering, you don’t get that far.

So, Catering will be about half as expensive as it is right now to match up with the Battles.

At the same time, we will change what resources you need in the Catering.

Currently, it really depends a lot on which Tournament it is.

In a Planks’ Tournament you will have to cate a lot of Planks,

which means that the market will be empty of Planks, essentially.

Instead, in every Tournament we will take from a pool of different resources.

So, Planks could show up in every Tournament, just like Marble and Steel.

This means that we can spread the resources more equally,

and then we can also incorporate costs like Mana.

What we don't want to ask for Sentient Goods, because we think at this point

you already need a lot of Sentient Goods for your in-game progress and in the Spire of Eternity,

so in the Tournament we will only ask for regular Goods and some of the other resources.

So, I see there is a list where you see Coins, Supplies and so on.

What do those numbers with the plus mean?

So, this is the Chapter at which point you will need the resource in the Tournament.

Usually we made it like that, that when you unlock a new resource, like the Orcs in Chapter 8,

in the Orc Chapter obviously, then one Chapter later it will be asked for in the Tournament.

This means, you have at least one Chapter time to get used to the resource, to ramp up your production,

so it will not interfere with your daily business, basically.

Nice, that sounds pretty fair actually!

Do you also have some changes planned for Battles?

Yes, of course!

One change is that we want to fix the amount of enemies’ Squads to always be five.

And, especially for beginners it is hard to understand how strong the enemy is,

because you have your own Squad Size, you have the enemy Squad Size,

and then you need to multiply.

You always have five but the enemy sometimes has one, sometimes has seven, so, how strong is the enemy now?

And if we always fix it to five Squads just like your own,

you can always directly compare the Squad Size to understand how strong the enemy is.

So yeah, we changed the way how difficulty ramps up with Provinces and Levels.

So, currently difficulty does not increase with the amount of Provinces you do.

This means that someone who has unlocked one hundred Provinces on the World Map,

can simply do as many Provinces he wants to.

At the point where he can defeat that difficulty without any losses,

he can do one hundred Provinces, basically without investment.

And someone who has fewer Provinces, like only 50, can never compete with them.

Instead now, the difficulty will increase with the number of Provinces.

But it will not only get harder, we will compensate for it.

Firstly, we will start way easier.

The first few Provinces will be super easy.

Everyone can defeat them.

And also, the difficulty that ramps up with the Star Level will grow less than it does now.

This means that when before you did like 30 Provinces all on the first two Star Levels,

maybe in the future you will complete as many Provinces as you can

on five or six Star Levels, and go less down the road.

So this means, the Level is more even also for early Players who didn’t unlock that many Provinces yet.

Is that the new challenge that you were talking about for Fellowships?

That would be boring, right?

I mean, that’s a good change but... naaaah!

There is a surprise there and I know you know what it is.

Are we getting more Chests to complete?

Yes!

Once you’ve finished all the ten Chests, you will get nine additional Chests,

that you can complete each week.

I think Andi can go a bit more into detail about that!

These new additional Chests are really meant to be for the top Fellowships of our worlds.

So, there are lots of Fellowships that manage the ten Chests we currently have, very easily, every week.

And we thought they need a new, better challenge, so these new Chests will be really difficult.

So, don’t try to get all nine of them at once.

Maybe start out with one at a time.

And with every week maybe go for one further.

So, don’t be frustrated if you can’t make all of them at once.

It’s absolutely worth it!

Because not only will you get the Ancient Knowledge spell,

you will also get Royal Restoration spells, in every Chest!

I’m pretty certain that all of our players can’t wait to try this out!

And I have really good news for you!

Because, all of these changes are going to be coming to our Beta world very soon!

So, you can actually try them if you sign up, create a Beta account right now,

start playing and get ready for the next Tournament, because it’s going to be there very, very soon.

And we can’t wait for your feedback!

Absolutely!

You can send it over the regular channels, meaning comment down below or over social media channels.

Nice!

So, I'd say let’s see each other in the Tournaments on BETA and enjoy the changes!

See you!