A browser based free to play title, Elvenar is the fantasy city building strategy from InnoGames where players champion the Elven or Human race and battle against orcs and other wayward races in a PVE focused MMO. With some beautifully designed graphics and compelling turn based strategic combat, on paper the game looks impressive, but as we dig a little deeper we find that this particular MMO isn't short on issues.

 

Repetitive Early Gameplay
Every strategy game of this type has some element of repeition, cycling through buildings, completing the same actions, it is in many ways to be expect and almost a staple of the genre. With enough options of things to cycle through, or the process not taking so long that it feels like those loops take forever, then it can be curtailed and less of an issue. Unfortunately in Elvenar that is not the case and the earliesy portions of the game building up your city are extremely tedious as players all go through the exact same step by step constructing of their settlement with vary little variation. With more things to construct and some extra options not so heavily tied in to build times, then the early loop/grind might not feel quite so prominent.

Long Construction Times
Whether training up units or constructing/upgrading buildings, the time it takes to get anything done is ridiculous. With early game players the game just constantly grinds to a halt as you simply don't have enough things to do to compete with the long wait times, so the "gameplay" becomes a case of sitting there for 20 minutes to train up some early troops (yes, even early game queues are this long), leaving the game and coming back later (not really promoting actually PLAYING the game) or spending premium currency Diamonds to rush tasks. In the late game it is purely that the construction times are staggeringly long and the whole game seems to drift into a "if you want to get anything done then you need to spend some money" scenario. What needs to change is the length of time it takes to do.. well.. Everything.

The "Balance" Updates
The game constantly changes to bring "balance". All games do this, it's the part of dealing with an ever evolving game where every new implementation can have unexpected changes, balance issues, power creep and more. The problem with Elvenar is that the "balance" changes always seem to be geared towards making it harder to simply get stuff done; content becomes tougher, gear becomes weaker, and more importantly the items and content players have purchased with real cash can periodically get nerfed without anything in the way of compensation where your cash bought item is suddenly worthless. The constantly moving goalposts, the extreme overhauls of features (not necessarily for the better) leave uncertainty with the community, and with online players the last thing they want when parting with their hard earned money is the thought that everything could change on a whim tomorrow. The updates need to have more subtlty and finesse, and anything that deeply impacts where players have heavily invested cash either needs to be an overall boost to them, or the offer to give some of that cash back!

New Combat Update
Combat more recently got an overhaul and unfortunately it was not for the better. Whilst some elements of the combat changes were fine the vast majority of complaints have been that PVE is now just ridiculously difficult. Player armies are weaker and are going up against vastly larger opponent armies that outnumber them; a steady rate of victory has now been replaced with a complete 180 of defeat after defeat after defeat. The difficulty has been scaled up dramatically, if it's to slow progression or simply add some challenge to PVE we're not sure, but either way it has unsettled the community and a lot of people jumped ship from the game because of it. Either scale the difficulty up more slowly to get some balance, or just revert it back to how it was and look at other ways to make combat more fun... such as...

PVP
The game doesn't have any PVP. This in itself isn't a bad thing, Elvenar is promoted as a PVE focused MMO and that's just fine, but the tactical grid based combat that is in the game is absolutely wasted on PVE and would be a great system for PVP battles. Whilst PVP isn't everyone's bag, the combat changes seem to be to try and create more interest with combat itself, well if people aren't that bothered about fighting then it seems like a wasted update (that has just hurt players that prefer the non-combat focus and more diplomatic/negotiation options or previously using the auto-combat that has now be made worthless). For those that do want a fix of some enjoyable combat then a standalone PVP system that doesn't heavily impact the main game's economy would be a change we'd love to see.

Fellowships are Worthless
In the game players can make their own alliances/guilds called Fellowships, but they're pretty pointless. Outside of the ability to trade with each other or give slight boosts through the "neighbourly help" feature, the Fellowships are nothing more than a private chat channel and the ability to mass message all the members. What the game needs is some content and features that Fellowships can work together on, whether spending time or resources to communally construct a wonder, or multiplayer map campaigns where players can battle alongside each other; anything that gives a reason to playing with other players and not just having some social hangout whilst you all essentially play the same single player game.

So that’s what we’d change with Elvenar, but more importantly what do you believe should be changed? What do you think could/should be added to improve the game? What would you add to your own personal wish list? Let us know what you think in the comments below!

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2017 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Articles, MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Puedes dejar una respuesta, o un trackback desde tu sitio web.