Nameless Namesake WoH said:

Hello Lords and Ladies

I was away from the game  and when I came back.......... oh myyy, the beacons are dead. Can some one please explain me , once fought  fiercely,  how does  those beacons are all  at level 1 and almost deserted ??

thanks in advance

Regards

NN

The simple answer? Plarium happen.....

Dear  Sir Dan Saul Knight

Thank you so much for your kind and elaborate explanation . Yup,  my league also dropped all the beacons and now defending lvl 20 fortress .

Thank you once gain

Sincerely
NN

For the first year or more the game was VERY expensive. 

People coined but what was bought didn't outweigh what was being in produced in game. The game remained somewhat balanced. On Dark Plains Roanne spent a fortune and KT survived the second server war but it didn't buy a win. 

3 Months later changes happened that made the game 10 times cheaper. Constant offers (previously coiners were buying full bank prices). 75% healer offers.

Then update after update added pay to win boosts to troop power. A 2.5k dragon  now can be worth well in excess of 10k power, before champions it was over 8k so conceivable with them 16k (i haven't done the maths for a while to be accurate).

It's now over 40/50 times cheaper to buy an army than it was at the start of the game.

So the coining now completely unbalances the game. Single people have armies that are bigger than entire leagues (leagues that have been going 3yrs+ or more). Where Roanna was buying 100m, people buy offence in billion chunks now. What is bought now completely overshadows what is produced in game.

As you probably know overwhelming offence can under siege mechanic kill defence with little to no losses. With hammers in the billions people couldn't hold beacons. They either lost their defence or gave up their beacons. In KoK we start the "Balur Worship" roleplay of dropping all our beacons and trying to keep our area of the map in Balur's hands, to highlight to Plarium how messed up the game was. They paid no attention of course.

The beacon map slowly became more and more empty.

As Plarium are geniuses, in the midst of the impending disaster of the loss of beacon game, the loss of league play and therefore the loss of any meaningful meta game they introduced a tournament where you could revive 90% of your losses from beacon attacks. That finished off beacons completely (although it was happening over time anyway).

A little side note to the story is fortresses. They give significant off and def bonuses for holding what is effectively one mega beacon. The fortress is also protected by force limits so much easier to defend. People took the logical approach of using what defence they had on their fortress giving bonuses rather than beacons giving nothing more than dark essence.

And so the game died as a meaningful strategy game with any activity or content.

Strategy wise when the beacons were all level 5 owned by large alliances there was very little in the way of actual wars and mostly all diplomacy which was a headache for me as I was 1 of the main diplos for my league and also a diplo for the large alliance I was in

My league used to be a large border holding beacon league but once beacon massacres happened, you lose a few here and there in beacons, always take them back, upgrading all the time, always chasing after beacons and then there was always the drama over de usage as well so we made the decision to give away all of our beacons and go offense, this has worked a treat for us, yes we have leagues we can go to for de so no need to hold beacons there, yes we have almost all of our badges at level 10 and this is from killing beacons not keeping them and we have no drama, league is relatively stress free where we get to play at times we want to and actually enjoy the game now 

the empty beacon fields make it possible now for many leagues to obtain their conquerors badge which used to be 1 of the toughest ones to obtain if you wer'nt friendly with the top 20 ranked leagues and choosing the right time of day to do it is a must 

Imho its a failure of Plarium to understand what they had. If you got a thriving sandbox, you want to make it better and bigger. Start threat it like a kitty litter box... is quite the opposite. Great read btw... Would have been nice to see any proper response from Plarium and how they reflect on it, but we will never get any such... 

Long read but very educational as I never knew the history of your server thankyou. 

See I have always been in the facebook server 1 Dark Plains, I was in the great David and Goliath war where HOT alliance took on the almighty Fatih family that is still 1 of the major leagues even in the game today who owned just over half the map of beacons back in the day. 

HOT was over 100 leagues of mostly small coiners and non coiners with only a tiny few large coiners who knew how to be able to send their hammers out without losing any troops due to the food restrictions back then and a trustworthy reliable alliance leadership back then too, it was a long tough war but yes Fatih was beaten and you know virtually all of the major leagues back then are still playing even to this day, there is still power struggles over borders between the alliances too but no where near as big as the Fatih war

My league started off with 4 Fatih beacons we killed back in the day and we got to keep them, from there we grew as a beacon league, beacons were everything back then, they would gain us better players because of our league rank and de usage but my league has been able to adapt with every change Plarium has done to the game, we realised that beacon massacres made it all to easy to destroy top 100 leagues of their ranks and keep them out of the rankings so we adapted, maybe 1 day we will have beacons again depending on the future changes Plarium does but we found to survive against the big coiner leagues we needed to be able to learn and adapt fast,

 I even became 1 of the fastest killers of offense in a castle war, took down some coiners offense in this way, they cant beat my offense raid on their castle to their 15 seconds to their catacombs after they liberate my siege on them and I have gained some mega kills this way with offense killing offense, cost effective for me and 1 of the most expensive gaming rides for the enemy 

Christine Hare said:

Long read but very educational as I never knew the history of your server thankyou. 

See I have always been in the facebook server 1 Dark Plains, I was in the great David and Goliath war where HOT alliance took on the almighty Fatih family that is still 1 of the major leagues even in the game today who owned just over half the map of beacons back in the day. 

HOT was over 100 leagues of mostly small coiners and non coiners with only a tiny few large coiners who knew how to be able to send their hammers out without losing any troops due to the food restrictions back then and a trustworthy reliable alliance leadership back then too, it was a long tough war but yes Fatih was beaten and you know virtually all of the major leagues back then are still playing even to this day, there is still power struggles over borders between the alliances too but no where near as big as the Fatih war

My league started off with 4 Fatih beacons we killed back in the day and we got to keep them, from there we grew as a beacon league, beacons were everything back then, they would gain us better players because of our league rank and de usage but my league has been able to adapt with every change Plarium has done to the game, we realised that beacon massacres made it all to easy to destroy top 100 leagues of their ranks and keep them out of the rankings so we adapted, maybe 1 day we will have beacons again depending on the future changes Plarium does but we found to survive against the big coiner leagues we needed to be able to learn and adapt fast,

 I even became 1 of the fastest killers of offense in a castle war, took down some coiners offense in this way, they cant beat my offense raid on their castle to their 15 seconds to their catacombs after they liberate my siege on them and I have gained some mega kills this way with offense killing offense, cost effective for me and 1 of the most expensive gaming rides for the enemy 

So you are playing on the facebook version and not the one we do? Thats kinda like apples and oranges...

Christine Hare said:

Our games work the same, the only difference is you can upgrade catacombs and we cant yet, we all still have our wars, offense and defense works the same etc, see I learn from you all about the history of the plarium server here and even on this forum there are facebook players who come here to interact with you all too, we are the same just different servers with different enemies to fight 

Yeah, our biggest enemy is Plarium, that is the difference.. :/

Hello Lords and Ladies

I was away from the game  and when I came back.......... oh myyy, the beacons are dead. Can some one please explain me , once fought  fiercely,  how does  those beacons are all  at level 1 and almost deserted ??

thanks in advance

Regards

NN

Christine Hare said:

we have an empty inner beacon map and the facebook server has just over 8k beacons on them, thats what damage the Beacon massacre done but the massacres have been stopped so I will wait and see what happens 

You forgot the most important point

Facebook beacons have Force Limit protection, but none of the Plarium.com servers have ever had any protection for their Beacons .... Plarium.com is a cash cow

Agreed Snowgoon with the forcelimit difference between the 2 servers, but that didn't stop the massive armies of 100k dragons sometimes even more, I have seen some massive armies on the facebook server 1 dark plains completely obliterate the inner beaconfield and how they done it was with their alliance

See even with forcelimit, it did not stop the powerful armies with all of the extra upgrades that can be done to offense troops.  I've seen players be able to send just over 50k of dragons to a beacon with the 150 mill forcelimt and destroy that beacon with little losses killing 20-30k griff beacons because they show their kills on the public facebook pages, forts its much larger and they wipe out all beacons from 1 league sometimes, my own offense doesn't have enough forcelimit on it yet to max at the 150mill for a beacon yet there are some leagues on the map that hold level 5 beacons with around 10k griff and 10k occult in them because just 1 test hit tells me whats inside and I drop those on my own when I'm after pvp if the good tourneys are on  as I suffer very small losses because of the high rank my offense troops are at and all of the extra offense points upgrades I have done to them as well as the champion and the Hero

I don't know what you all consider a well defended fort or beacon to be, but for me a beacon needs 100k griff and occult minimum, fort at least close to 1 million griff and occult to stop the massive killers

The game at the moment is an offense players dream and even though I play offense I really hope the beacon improvements update on the road map bring some real positives for the defenders out there who still like to defend

Christine Hare said:

Agreed Snowgoon with the forcelimit difference between the 2 servers, but that didn't stop the massive armies of 100k dragons sometimes even more, I have seen some massive armies on the facebook server 1 dark plains completely obliterate the inner beaconfield and how they done it was with their alliance

See even with forcelimit, it did not stop the powerful armies with all of the extra upgrades that can be done to offense troops.  I've seen players be able to send just over 50k of dragons to a beacon with the 150 mill forcelimt and destroy that beacon with little losses killing 20-30k griff beacons because they show their kills on the public facebook pages, forts its much larger and they wipe out all beacons from 1 league sometimes, my own offense doesn't have enough forcelimit on it yet to max at the 150mill for a beacon yet there are some leagues on the map that hold level 5 beacons with around 10k griff and 10k occult in them because just 1 test hit tells me whats inside and I drop those on my own when I'm after pvp if the good tourneys are on  as I suffer very small losses because of the high rank my offense troops are at and all of the extra offense points upgrades I have done to them as well as the champion and the Hero

I don't know what you all consider a well defended fort or beacon to be, but for me a beacon needs 100k griff and occult minimum, fort at least close to 1 million griff and occult to stop the massive killers

The game at the moment is an offense players dream and even though I play offense I really hope the beacon improvements update on the road map bring some real positives for the defenders out there who still like to defend

Could you give me a link (pref non Facebook, don't trust that thing) to that roadmap they mention beacons? All I know about is this one: https://plarium.com/forum/en/stormfall-age-of-war/entertainment-community/107122_the-roadmap-for-our-future-updates/

Futrikelv, the post on the facebook community page is exactly the same with the same details as the 1 in your link as I just opened and read it, I would have to find 1 that is a link from U Tube as its also there as a video

Zardas said:

Gadheras said:

Zardas said:

The beacon game was killed by Plarium introducing the Beacon Massacre event where you could revive 90% of what you lost during that massacre for free. At the same time two of the major leagues was fighting each other, one of those leagues decided to go and kill all the beacons on the map, since they could not hold any no one should.

That doesn't make sense. Because if you "can't" hold a beacon, then why should you anyway? Beacons, and forts, is pvp grounds. Just its so horrible unbalanced and a swipe of a credit card count for a lot more than the combined effort of many players. There this saying, money talks and bullshit walks. but in our case, its gameplay that took a walk...

If someone just want to watch everything burn and is able to do so, that is their choice. Flaws of game mechanics come into play when there is no effective way to combat it.... Or here is another thought. The game evolved to a degree (artificially bloated by spending). So what it took to defend a beacon reached such a level, so if you was stretching yourself to thin, you ended up not able to hold any. 

tbh brutally honest, if you can't hold it you don't deserve it. Been playing EVE since the start back in 2003... Seen empires rise and fall in a sandbox so waste stormfall seems like a small speck of grain in comparison. Where some fights was not just about gain systems and riches, but to deny others of it. Yeah, Plarium screwed the pouch in how mechanics work i n this game, but when it come to the nature of pvp. All games with a pvp aspect is the same. Players do things because they can, and their motive for do so is no more wrong than your own motives for playing and what drive you. Some players like to build sand castles, others like to knock them over, because for them your salty jelly tears taste delicious. 

The rewards for holding beacons is not just there with the effort needed to do so. Tbh, I would slashed down the numbers of beacons by A LOT. Then rather have beacons give bonus's to the league members more like the champions work. Some could give bonus to food, gold, iron, other to increased stats of spyhing, off, def, whatever.. Why not have some very few limited beacons that could give like a tiny sprinkle of sapphires to the members of the league holding it, now that would be worth fight for. 

KT could not have taken all those beacons with out the Beacon Massacre, well they could have done it, but would not bee willing to take all those losses. I am not blaming them, it was the right strategical thing to do because they were losing members to other leagues that could hold beacons. And the beacon massacre was also what kept KT from holding any beacons, because the risk was to high.

The first thing I thought about when the beacon massacre was announced was that you could soften the big stacked corner beacons during the massacre, then hammer it with your big hammer 1 second after the BM ended. And this is what we did to Destiny. We smashed allot of their defense in that last beacon they had they have been a shadow of them self since that day.

So this is why I say it was the beacon massacre game mechanic who ruined the beacon game. Us players we just need to do the best with the tools that are given to us so cant really blame it on one league or a person.

But you are right that the coining is giving way to mush power to a few individuals and is not good for the game, should bee a monthly limt on coining to make it a more interesting game. Would love a game like this that was subscription based, like 20$ a month thats it, everyone play on the same terms.

And BTW I do love reading about all that history but it dont have anything to do with why the beacon game is dead. As the beacon game died like 6 months ago.  

KT was not the only league out there smashing beacons if I recall correctly ....

As for Destiny - when were their beacons smashed??  I don't believe they lost as much defense as you think.   My defense was fully intact (everything I had was on their beacons and fort) when I among many others left Destiny so must have been later :))

I do agree on your point when it comes to a subscription based game it would be much better 

**Edit**  a further note on the Destiny Beacons .... Emps would never have taken them without Ratcoms sacrificing their offense to soften them for Emps 

And BTW I do love reading about all that history but it dont have anything to do with why the beacon game is dead. As the beacon game died like 6 months ago.  

BiohazarD said:

Gadheras said:

Tbh would be very interesting to hear a honest view from Plarium on this. Or if they even got a hindsight how they screwed over their own game to get it into the state it is today. And if they have any idea of how to fix or remedy it. 

Most of the original devs probably aren't around anymore.  I'd guess since the company was bought out by Aristocrat there's been some employee turnover. 

Doesn't change the fact or excuse anything. Someone, somewhere, is sitting with the collective responsibility ... (and ow us a explenation).

"Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds"

Gadheras said:

Zardas said:

The beacon game was killed by Plarium introducing the Beacon Massacre event where you could revive 90% of what you lost during that massacre for free. At the same time two of the major leagues was fighting each other, one of those leagues decided to go and kill all the beacons on the map, since they could not hold any no one should.

That doesn't make sense. Because if you "can't" hold a beacon, then why should you anyway? Beacons, and forts, is pvp grounds. Just its so horrible unbalanced and a swipe of a credit card count for a lot more than the combined effort of many players. There this saying, money talks and bullshit walks. but in our case, its gameplay that took a walk...

If someone just want to watch everything burn and is able to do so, that is their choice. Flaws of game mechanics come into play when there is no effective way to combat it.... Or here is another thought. The game evolved to a degree (artificially bloated by spending). So what it took to defend a beacon reached such a level, so if you was stretching yourself to thin, you ended up not able to hold any. 

tbh brutally honest, if you can't hold it you don't deserve it. Been playing EVE since the start back in 2003... Seen empires rise and fall in a sandbox so waste stormfall seems like a small speck of grain in comparison. Where some fights was not just about gain systems and riches, but to deny others of it. Yeah, Plarium screwed the pouch in how mechanics work i n this game, but when it come to the nature of pvp. All games with a pvp aspect is the same. Players do things because they can, and their motive for do so is no more wrong than your own motives for playing and what drive you. Some players like to build sand castles, others like to knock them over, because for them your salty jelly tears taste delicious. 

The rewards for holding beacons is not just there with the effort needed to do so. Tbh, I would slashed down the numbers of beacons by A LOT. Then rather have beacons give bonus's to the league members more like the champions work. Some could give bonus to food, gold, iron, other to increased stats of spyhing, off, def, whatever.. Why not have some very few limited beacons that could give like a tiny sprinkle of sapphires to the members of the league holding it, now that would be worth fight for. 

KT could not have taken all those beacons with out the Beacon Massacre, well they could have done it, but would not bee willing to take all those losses. I am not blaming them, it was the right strategical thing to do because they were losing members to other leagues that could hold beacons. And the beacon massacre was also what kept KT from holding any beacons, because the risk was to high.

The first thing I thought about when the beacon massacre was announced was that you could soften the big stacked corner beacons during the massacre, then hammer it with your big hammer 1 second after the BM ended. And this is what we did to Destiny. We smashed allot of their defense in that last beacon they had they have been a shadow of them self since that day.

So this is why I say it was the beacon massacre game mechanic who ruined the beacon game. Us players we just need to do the best with the tools that are given to us so cant really blame it on one league or a person.

But you are right that the coining is giving way to mush power to a few individuals and is not good for the game, should bee a monthly limt on coining to make it a more interesting game. Would love a game like this that was subscription based, like 20$ a month thats it, everyone play on the same terms.

And BTW I do love reading about all that history but it dont have anything to do with why the beacon game is dead. As the beacon game died like 6 months ago.