I believe that the nutcracker guardhouse is a fine example of what they did right, even if they sold the event pass for cash only.
- Everybody can obtain several in the long run
- It gives everybody an ever reocurring long term goal to achieve and still:
- many bought in to get more nutcracker huts faster.
I consider the nutcracker guardhouse a shiny. because everybody wants them and people are willing to spend cash and dias on them. dias too, because you could spend dias to get two or more chocolateries.
I once made two suggestions which in hindsight would also count as shinies which could serve as a massive dia sink
I hadnt posted them in the ideas forum so i dont know what the voting on each one would end up), ill copy paste them here as an example for various possible shinies. Although in my opinion Inno needs to create dia sinks inside and outside of events.
Suggestion 1: Specialist slots for GBs
Each great building got several slots (10-20 slots per GB) added to it, to put specialists in.
Maybe once every two weeks a pop up would appear on a players screen, where one random particular specialist would be offered in exchange for diamonds. The rarer the specialist the more expensive.
Maybe specialists could also drop in events, as a rare reward, e.g. if one opened a pumpkin in the helloween event, a specialist could drop as a very rare reward.
What values would specialists have?
There would be different categories of specialists, and different rarities of specialists:
Rarity:
common
unusual
rare
epic
mythological
the rarer, the better values
Categories:
- Scientists which give one, two, three, four, or five (depending on the rarity) additional forge points when harvesting the GB - they could only be placed into science-related GBs (like hagia, cape, orangery etc)
- Military strategists which provide a TINY boost in attack power if they are put in an offensive battle-related GB (they could only be placed there) such as zeus, aachener, terracotta etc. the rarer they are, the higher the bonus.
- engineers who could only be placed into goods-related BGs, they would provide a TINY amount of goods of the current age when collecting the BG, and the rarer the specialist, the more goods
etc etc.
Suggestion 2: The technology center
This shiny would be end game content. It could be a massive dia sink because people would need to buy a plethora of blueprints (200 dias each) if they cant wait upgrading the tech center.
Regardless, It would be an upgradeable structure at the edge of the city (much like the castle-system) yet it would be something completely different.
In order to upgrade it to Tier 1, a player must
- own a complete set of 9 blueprints for every GB in existence (no exceptions, he must have each set of blueprints complete)
- have goods from every existing age
- have a certain amount of forge points
If a player matches this requirement, a red button would appear above the structure, and when hes pressing it, his sets of each GB’s blueprints and the goods from each era and the forge points would be consumed and then combined into the Tier 1 Technology Center.
Once the technology center has appeared, it can be upgraded to higher tiers, the requirement for the next tier would then be:
- FOUR full sets of BP’s for every existing GB
- even more goods from every age
- even more forgepoints
The third level would require:
- EIGHt full sets of BP’s for every existing GB
- even more goods from every age
- even more forgepoints
And so on and so on. You could level the technology center infinitely, with ever more requirements. The only cap are the (maybe exponentially) increasing amounts of blueprints, and the ever increasing other ressources.
Maybe if a player is missing goods from
various ages they could also be bought with dias?
What would be the stats of the tech center?
The technology center could reward alot of different things, though one had to divide the rewards into categories:
- the good old stuff such as attack / defend boosts and what not
- new things that aint covered by GB‘s, such as 1% up to 20% reduction to FP costs for GB‘s, that could come handy when one levels a very high GB
(ok for that the GB calculators need to have a new line being added to them where one can put up the level of their technology center, and i just came up with this as an example of what could be done)
- or head onto a completely new path and make the rewards pure cosmetic. every couple of levels the technology center would unlock a cosmetic.
- Or mix category 1 and 2 and on top of it, every level unlocks a chance to obtain a cosmetic:
uncommon / rare / epic skin for the tavern
uncommon / rare / epic skin for the merchant
Uncommon / rare / epic Skin for the Expedition Ship
jungle skin / desert skin / mountaneous skin / fiery skin / astro skin for the landscape that is surrounding the city
another possible reward could be (as a secondary or third passive reward): an elite unit, which is a slightly stronger version of the players age units.
Inno could name it
Elite-*insert name of the normal unit from the age of the player*
and give it a different color, to minimize the effort needed to realize it, because every age needed its own elite units.
The alcatraz would not affect the technology center. There would be no daily output of elite units. It would rather work like a casern, where you can unlock a certain amount of slots, and when a player produces an elite unit they could choose which one (heavy or light infantry, sniper, artillery or tank). If an elite unit dies, one has to produce a new (the time to produce one would be several hours up to a day). Elite units cannot be manually healed or restored with diamonds. They can only heal over time.
every 3 levels the technology center would unlock an additional slot.
how would it look like? I dont know, but maybe it could be designed similar to the castle system. Each tier it would look more epic.
/edit: together with the starship concept and other - yet to be thought out - shinies Inno could make sure to sell massive amounts of dias in the future and at the same time keep the crowd happy, and also at the same time not having to nerf anything at all.
At least in my opinion.
