Lord Oberon said:

Like what, Lord Invokers? We have a list of bugs that need to be fixed. If you know some bugs that we don't know about, we'd gladly investigate and fix them if possible. 

I have already posted on forums two separate bugs related to Hamlets without any action taken on them. They are pretty simple to fix and are not rocket science. I also sent a letter to you about the new raiding mechanism which is totally unfair but still have not gotten any response on it. These are the things I can think from top of my head. If I would start thinking about other fixes needed then it would become a very long list.

Beside need for faster units building, we really need a serious change in award system.

Currently, best award is avoiding PVP and BG battles, spec. PVP battles. Simple difference in points between winner and looser will not lead to real awards, not if you're not CC player. We need some guaranteed award when we win in battle according to our lost. In reality every winner get more than loose in battle, or he is really stupid it was in the battle.

Is waiting weeks and months emergent and good gameplay?

My Lord, if you think that waiting for months is all that Stormfall is about, you are wrong. As I mentioned, waiting is just part of the gameplay for both coiners and non-paying players. That's a fact.If you aren't fine with this part of the gameplay you are free to not play the game. So far we see no reasons to change the existing building times. If you believe the game lacks "emergent gameplay" what could I possibly say to change your mind? 

To each his own. I find Candy Crush boring, but there is absolutely nothing that King could do about that. Maybe if they added dragons and build queues there I'd like it better. But this isn't going to happen.

I like how he just cherry picks your questions.

I'm just trying to answer actual questions that aren't loaded or rhetorical.

Another thing which is deduce able from following the forum is that the Facebook servers of stormfall (and other plarium games) have lot more users and they introduce changes first on the those servers/games and whether you like it or not they are forced upon this server. So, whatever you say or suggest here will keep on being ignored. Plarium wants to make money from the players they have on this server as long as they can without spending any resources. There is no beta testing or even testing of any sort when updates are introduced and that is the reason they are full of bugs. Before anyone says that I am being hateful, I would say it is not because that is the truth.

Does Wrath of Weor do more damage than other legendary units one could buy? Then they should certainly be more expensive than them...

OR,

Does Wrath of Weor do more damage than other legendary units one could buy? Then they should certainly be more expensive than them...

OR,

Scrap it completely!!!

Just a suggestion.  Plarium wants more PvP.  Players are risk averse because of the cost in time, $, or both to rebuild if you take a big loss.  How about giving us a revive with resources option?  This would have a natural limit since players can do only 10 raids per day and troops can be revived for only 3 days.  Even if you $ the resources, there is a limit to how much gold and iron you can buy each day, so not really a game breaking way for $ players to buy back troops super cheap.  This might make players less risk averse since we can recover some of our lost troops nearly instantly without spending a dime.  

It may be hard to predict the overall effect of making a massive change like cutting troop production times all at once, but you could get a general idea by taking a step in that direction and see what happens.  

An alternative would be reduce the sapphire cost to revive and/or significantly increase the sapphire rewards from tournaments.  The current set up is very expensive and ensures that most players will not revive most of their troops.  Make it more affordable and people would have more troops to play with, theoretically, allowing for more PvP.

Mehnslayer said:

Both posts have been removed, and I edited your post to remove the quote Gadheras.

No need for that language, keep it PG 

Sometimes, the result of your design produce unwanted results I suppose -)

Hey Oberon/Plarium...

Any chance we could have a new server with faster build times of units? It wouldn't affect any of your currents servers eco system and you could getl test data from it on the subject too.

You would soon enough see if players like it and if/how it affect players spending and activity pattern right?

Lord Oberon said:

A revive with resources option is already in the game. You can rebuild most of your units using your resources only. 

Lord Oberon,

Not true.  Revive is a function from the infirmary where you get some revived free based on infirmary level and can pay sapphires to INSTANTLY have dead troops back.  There is no option to use resources to INSTANTLY have troops back.  Rebuild is subject to the troop build times...and that is not in any way, shape, or form instant.  

This isn't just semantics; they are different functions.  One is instant and the other takes time...lots and lots of time.

Mehnslayer said:

Well lets be honest here guys... He isn't lying, as much as you may not like that response. 

Revive is paying to instantly get dead troops back.  Rebuilding is cuing more troops for training and waiting for them to be generated.  They are not the same thing.  

What I am suggesting is being able to use resources to REVIVE dead troops from the infirmary.  That is not cutting production times nor is it making sapphires more readily available.  It is just giving players a non sapphire option to revive that is self limiting (limited raid attempts and if you coin the resources, there is a cap to how much you can buy in a day).

Mehnslayer said:

Thatguy, wording is VERY important in these situations ;) 

I agree. In this case it is cynicism.

I never said Stormfall was rocket science, but becoming good at this game requires a particular knowledge, mindset and attitude to gaming. 

what is complex with this game?

We have a Wiki , FAQ and numerous guides for Stormfall. Most casual games don't have all that because there players know exactly what to do. It's not like that with Stormfall.

Mehnslayer said:

To be honest I wouldn't consider SF either, it's kind of middle ground... You have things like learning and mastering BG's which takes a long time, however 90% of game mechanics are a non factor outside of tournaments. There is no incentive besides social to stay logged in, log in - build units, catacomb units - raid castles, return an hour later to catacomb units and that is your day. 

I know family members that spend a whole lot more time on things like farmville or similar, than I ever do on Stormfall in a day. The ingame chat in SF so terrible that the incentive to stay logged in for social chat is more frusterating than anything else, then its better to make use of teamspeak, ventrillo, mumble or similar for that aspect. The number of times I have had the game lock up and freeze after type something into the chat is just.....

Mehnslayer said:

Yea I know, A lot could be improved for the game to function optimally, personally I think this game is a gold mine, (Plarium is already making a lot of money though) It just needs a lot of hard work put into it to revert a lot of things players want and to shape it more or less to what players want

And yes, most players here want a hardcore experience... But with that comes immense strategy and planning, not winning by buying 1mil sapphires for 1 dollar ~

Well problem is some players can spend thousands of dollars on this game, and others got a more "sensible" budget to spend. But Plarium does cater more to the ones spending the most, and even a player spend a lot of time and effort and "grind" they can't get close to compete with the big spenders even by spending all that time they create content for the ones that spend a lot... If Plarium one day woke up to find only big spenders left on the server they would face a serious content problem.

- Very few take high risks because units take to long to replace - check.

- In tournaments leagues stack own DEF at alts, bot castles etc, and then send OFF to same place to farm the most EXP - check.

(The nice low risk PVP Plarium pushing towards)

- Abuse of glitches such as send resources to targets to raid the most - check. (farming bots this way can give ridicilous amount of resources).

- Obvious bots in game never removed even after reported over and over - check. (remove them would just remove raid content I guess, Imagine you had to start raid actual playing players that would fight back).

- With high risks come great rewards... uh no, FAIL - check. (There is no real incentive to risk a lot, because there is no reward in the game that justify the risk. You shouldn't be able to win big all the time, but knowing you have a CHANCE to do so, would justify the risk of trying. Loading BG'  over time for that big payout is not the same, its just simple maths)..

There is room for strategy and planning, but the game doesn't really push towards that aspect. It does push towards what is SAFE and give the least risk. I can sometimes enjoy start stalk a player, take notes of when he is active, when he send out raids, when its most likely he got his offense in the open and so on. and then try to hit hard. Then bask in the tears when get mailed about what kind of ahole I am that made him lose his shit and I made him quit, or Im on his death list and he will burn my house and kill my dog or whatever. (and yeah, you can get a lot of abuse after damage someone serious in this game).

This game could be so much more, but a lot of things just make it terrible sad... :/

So here is my fix that will make oberon happy

let the build times be faster but make the troops more expensive in terms of resources like that you deliver what players want and at the same time real players who are engaged in doing raids and playing the game would be benefited they will build troops and they will be encouraged to lose them raiding to get resources to rebuild

like this players who do play the game will even join pvp and lose more

and to new players they will be encouraged to play and raid

now to some players the cost of units is already high in terms of resources so pls remember you can send raids with 50k limit each and players who can join pvp and want the gameplay to be more alive and active are the ones who raid daily and will always build their castle, besides you don't have very long queues because resources are a problem right?

of course you would be building less troops but at least that would happen in a shorter time and you would actually like to use them for raids pvp and such

now this will not affect your profits I guess players will start using sapphires for resources instead of reviving units

and like this players who face big losses especially units they cant build still can revive with sapphires at the healer

now pls understand this is an idea I would like to know what you all feel about it and why

note: I have been playing this game for 3 months now so if there is something wrong pls tell me so I could learn

A revive with resources option is already in the game. You can rebuild most of your units using your resources only. 

Its kinda funny though, because of the long build times, I find myself play less. Which also means Im less inclined to spend more, which I would done if I had a reason to be more active.

I don't want sapphires to be easy available, and I dont care about increasing payouts from battlegrounds. For some players it would been nice to be able to complete a BG more often than I dunno, once a year?

For my castle to produce enough resources to load up like BG's with 3m.. would take 384 days.... Of course with active raiding that number would go down, but with feeding units to BG's I wouldnt really have much units to raid with though. Of about 17k units, I got 15k that hardly see light of day down there in the catas. Well except if I can catch someones off in the open.

If Plarium happy about majority of the players got their units hiding in the basement that is your choice as developers.

You could spawn a new server with faster build times, and run it for a month or two, and collect data. See how it compares in activity to your other ones. You might get surprised. With unit production at near instant with only resources being the limiting factor, you would see players spend more time with the game. There is incentive to sit play until last unit of iron and gold is spent and all your raids used up. Then its incentive to sit just wait for next raid to be available to just go out and get more resources to grow bigger. (the grind way).

Lord Oberon said:

Is waiting weeks and months emergent and good gameplay?

My Lord, if you think that waiting for months is all that Stormfall is about, you are wrong. As I mentioned, waiting is just part of the gameplay for both coiners and non-paying players. That's a fact.If you aren't fine with this part of the gameplay you are free to not play the game. So far we see no reasons to change the existing building times. If you believe the game lacks "emergent gameplay" what could I possibly say to change your mind? 

To each his own. I find Candy Crush boring, but there is absolutely nothing that King could do about that. Maybe if they added dragons and build queues there I'd like it better. But this isn't going to happen.

I like how he just cherry picks your questions.

I'm just trying to answer actual questions that aren't loaded or rhetorical.

Lord Oberon,

The long build times may not be the only part of gameplay, but it is a major factor in strategy and gameplay.  When you consider participation in PvP tournament, you generally have one of 2 factors at play:  1) risk vs reward or 2) This player made me mad and is now going to get punished.  Risk vs reward generally says the tournament rewards don't pay off.  The amount of troops you lose to get max prizes take months to rebuild unless you $ to get them all back and that would be several hundred dollars every tournament.  

In my opinion, the long build times reduce PvP in the game.  When I look at my battle reports, 9/10 of them are fireballs.  That's great for Plarium since Fireballs are $, but what that tells me is that people are averse to committing troops to attack.  When I look at battle reports, it seems as though many players just keep all in cata and stay spent down.  Not really a setup you want in a game that is supposed to be driven by PvP.  

You mentioned strategy and the troop types do give a really wide range of specializations, strengths, weaknesses...If we weren't forced to do so much of our fighting blind, we could make far better use of that.  We can't spy on incoming attacks.  Logically, when an army is in line of sight, you should be able to see what is coming. All we can see, even when 30 sec away, is travel speed and who it is from.  We can't see attacks coming at our holdings, just at our castle.  We can spy on defenders, but can't see if more is put out after the spy attempt or if the spy attempt prompted them to just hide everything.  Bottom line:  We have all these amazing troop types with strengths and weaknesses that could be exploited if we weren't fighting blind most of the time. 

Guys, you talking to deaf ears, short of start lob artilery shells at their office building.

Anything we keep ask for usually end up in the black market with a price tag if it happens at all.. Like auto hide units in catas....

But so does things that we dont really ask for. Im surprised the auto combine resource packs didnt come with a token price tag of 10 sapphires to use.....

I so wish we could attack and siege Oberons castle, to show our love and apprication :p