On balance I do like the QI.
But there are some issue that should be addressed:
- Entrance. Many have notices both in this forum and in yt video that sending us to the map is not the best. I saw suggestion to go directly for the settlement, but that has it's own problem. Starting from next incursion, we can start with any difficulty the guild has completed/reached according to the announcement. So probably most will need to go to the settlement for the first 1-2 days. Possible solutions:
- Open the last one we where on, before we left.
- Add a message that tell the use that the ship button will transfer player to the settlement. Show only on first entry!
- When clicking on the QI icon in main city, offer a choice (this actually add a click, but it allow us to see the two choices in early game). This is not compatible with the previous two.
- Bugs: there are still too many bugs to go live. Those should be addressed.
- Population: in the settlement we see the available population but not the total population. It should show both, like we can see in both our main city and in settlement.
- Population requirement for building with no population. No check on population should be executed when adding or selling building that do not produce population nor consume population. I suppose this might affect also main city and settlement, but it is wrong and it makes bugs like the one reported on population much worse by impending any correction workaround. Instead a 0 population requirement should be used to skip the check.
- Happiness (or whatever is the name for QI, I don't care): the information in the announcement should be available in the icon. The whole table, not just how much to reach next level. We are also missing how much we can drop happiness before we go down a level. The current interface is lacking.
- Happiness and population cost: Building that consume population or happiness should show it when hovering on them after they are built. Currently we can only see those costs in the building menu. On main city at least happiness cost in building is available also after the building is completed. In QI it isn't.
- Total coin and supply production: show the total 10 hours production of coin and supply in the window that open when hovering on them. Do not include the town hall 20 hours production in the calculation. It would help when developing the settlement to balance them out if needed (it is needed in the last few days of the incursion).
- Championship, season and incursion. The name tend to be confused because season is in other context used for a championship. Just call it an Incursion and remove the term season!
- Attack and defence bonuses: we cannot see those bonuses. In the army window we see the bonus for the attacking army but there is nowhere to see those of the defending army until we are on a node we need to defend. Both bonuses should be visible in the army window. Something like there are visible in PvP should work.
- Troops healing: there is no way to know how much time the troops require to heal. If I have a limited number of troops, and I'm not using diamonds to heal, I don't know when to return for additional battles. This is not such a big issue with the low healing time of iron age troops, but when additional ages are implemented it will be an ever bigger problem. We should be able to see how much time healing takes. Any solution applied to QI can be extended for unattached units in main city and Egyptian settlement. There at least if we have a barrack we can get an estimate, but in QI we cannot see it anywhere.
- Troops and goods choice: currently we must choose the troops first and then the goods (unless I'm remembering wrong). Players should be allowed to choose each independently and in any order they want. For early games it doesn't matter, but small guilds that are able to progress one difficulty per incursion, might thus be able to wait till the reach a goods node before taking a decision. For bigger guilds this has no impact.
- Communication GvG: it was an error to link the QI and GvG in the announcements. It created the expectation that QI is a substitute of GvG, but it isn't. The communication about the two should be more clear that there is no relationship. You are adding a feature that can be used on mobile (in the future) and browser and removing one that can be used only on browser.
- Communication battle: The announcement clarify that combat bonuses of main city do not apply in incursion. But many aspect of the game do not clearly state if incursion battle are affected or not. This should be more clear on the individual items. We shouldn't have to guess which one is correct. Currently:
- Himeji Castle (only main city battles is already in the text)
- Arctic Orangery (same era, but I suppose it doesn't apply)
- The Kraken (not specified. I suppose it doesn't)
- Quest with kill units (someone reported that QI does count. Is this a bug?)
- Quest with win battles (doesn't count but not specified. Is this a bug?)
- Quest with win battles without loosing (shouldn't count, same as previous. But a retreat also shouldn't. I didn't test this)
- Nodes: the information on the node is inconsistent. Some information is available only while not on the node and hidden once the node is reached: currently buffing, currently buffed by (stronghold), and the equivalent for garrison. This also applies to the "Node Reward" that is visible only once the player is on the node: normal, advances or boss. It should be visible before moving to the node. This does affect participation, since until you move from initial position you cannot see that you get individual reward for progress!
- There is a number above nodes that are not clearer. I think it is the number of player currently on the node. That is pretty useless, and for some reason is not available for completed nodes. Why? It would be more useful if the number was the number of player that have contributed progress to the node, like we can seen once entering the node. This could be shown for cleared node too.View attachment 10903
- There is a flag to indicate where the player is located. The background is pretty dark. The flag should not be black!
- Building duration for population and production buildings: I like the three tiers and I don't mind that 10 hours. It's intended to consume shards/diamonds. But the 1 hour create a shift in collection time that is annoying. Suggestion: reduce that to something like 5 or 20 minutes. Still not instantaneous like the lower tire (5 seconds), but not enough to shift collection time. The 1 hours on the cultural building and decoration is not a problem at all.
- Road: the roads has the look and feel of an iron age gravel road and it cost 1000 coin and 100 supplies per square. But it's called "Path in the sand". Charging anyone for building a path in the sand is fraud. Do you know how you make a path in the sand? Solution: change the name to the corresponding building in iron age (all the other building have the same names).
- Pass: like in events the pass should show a number for uncollected reward. This should not affect the main city icon, like event entry icon are not affected by unclaimed main prizes in events.
- Entrance icon should show an indication when production are completed in settlement, like all other settlement.
- Chest icon has a lock while difficulty I is not completed. To incentivise players the chest should be clickable and show the reward for difficulty I at that stage (keep the lock). A partial view fo the prizes is available in the difficulty icon, but this is unclear since we cannot understand from that when is actually in the chest.
- Fragment of level one building. No fragment of level one building should be offered if at higher difficulty there is a chance of getting instead fragment of the selection kit. There is a high chance that player will get stuck with fragment that they cannot obtain anymore. All reward should be either the level one building fragments OR the selection kit. Do not mix them.
- The fragment of the neo colossus level one should be converted to neo colossus selection kit.
- The fragment of neo botanical rotunda can remain unchanged, because, unless I'm wrong, the selection kit is never a prize.
- The fragment of neo winner plaza can remain unchanged, because, unless I'm wrong, the selection kit is never a prize.
- New building naming is lazy. You are recycling existing name with neo added in front. Lazy, but also useful for rapid search in the inventory. Since no advanced search is available there.
- Communication transparency*: you are reusing the iron age building, but you made some major changes. If you look at the 40+ pages on this thread you will notice that some players didn't notice they can get combat bonuses from decoration nor that decoration cost happiness instead of providing it. The announcementshould stress those differences:
- Cultural building do not require a road in QI
- Decoration consume happiness and provide combat bonuses
- The cost of troop in barracks depend on the unit associated with the barrack
- Championship reward:
- Based on ranking it seems that guilds with not even one point of progress will receive the same reward of a guild in position 100 that did participate. If they don't then the ranking should reflect this by removing the reward (do not solve by removing the guild from the ranking!)
- The reward for the top position is so high compared to lower position that there is a risk of top guilds being unreachable. This might be a problem, but maybe this is intentional.
There was a bug, now fixed, that allowed players to jump to later nodes even if the previous were not cleared yet. It allowed better cooperation and was more fun. I understand that it was never intended that guild member could beat the boss before clearing previous nodes. It allowed guild member to specialise in specific goods/troops and clear the nodes where your troops have the maximum impact, not just troops type, but also troop bonuses for attacking vs defending army. It made setting target more meaningful.
Suggestions (without allowing to beat the boss of a not clearer difficulty level):
- Allow us to click on any node to check the information available there. Block movement button if node cannot be reached currently.
- Show the same information on a node both while a player is on the node and while the player isn't there yet: prize level, progress, troops type, goods donation requirement, coin and supply donation requirement, progress bar, buffed by, buffing, etc. Exception action button is not visible because movement button should be visible instead. Disabled if not is not reachable.
- Do not allow movement to the boss until all the node on a path from start to boss are cleared.
- Do not allow movement to a choice nodes until all nodes from start or previous choice node to target choice node are clearer.
- Do not allow movement to nodes after choice node until choice node is clearer, and choice is done (this is like it works currently after the fix).
- Do not allow movement to node after a branching until branch node is clearer. In the picture below:
- Do not allow to reach any node in picture until 1 is cleared.
- Once 1 is cleared allow reaching nodes 2 and 4 (garrison).
- Once node 2 is cleared allow reaching node 5 (garrison).
- Node 3 (boss) should be reachable only once node, 1, 2 and any previous node on a path from start is cleared (in the part not included in the picture)!
This changes should allow player to focus on their own strength and have more fun with the feature, without allowing guild to skip directly to the boss.
View attachment 10904
* I do not play on beta because I wish to help InnoGames in finding bugs. I play here because the information provided in communication is insufficient, misleading (suggesting to use a loosing tactic), or baffling.
I play on beta to see what is actually going on with new feature and event before they go live. There are youtube channel whose only content is providing the information missing in the official communication. So it is very annoying when feature like Rival in Wildlife 2024 are changed between beta and live and the information provided is "we made it easier" (no you didn't) and we added buildings (and moved the milestone rewards to quest reward, but that was
not in the announcement). When a feature is changed from beta to live the announcement should contain all the information that Inno usually forget to include.
Well, I didn't get any at level 4 difficulty (we stopped there with my guild) but I may have not done enough encounters on Advanced Node, that's quite likely 
