fpventer said:

The Cost VS Reward of Stormfall is a joke on all players.

This game is categorized as a 'Free to Play' but there is Zero chance of fully enjoying this game, or being competitive if you are a Free Player VS Wallet Warrior.

Proof?

House of Unity: 

9 of the 10 up-gradable levels are achievable by inviting 50 friends, and have them all reach level 15. Yes 50 friends!!!!!

To be able to get the final 10% boost to resources will set you back an unbelievable 48400 Sapphires to buy 968 tokens needed.

($200 only buys 33000 Sapphires)

Castle Expansion: 

The first 2 expansions are 'free' as long as you have enough friends that joined. 

The next 5 upgrades are 500 Sapphires each for a total of 2500 Sapphires for a max size castle.

Temple of War:

To use all 6 slots for Relics will cost you either 21 friends or 900 Sapphires

To store Relics you can open up the first line of 5 slots by inviting 35 friends, the other 9 rows of 5 slots each can be individually unlocked for 300 Sapphires each, that's 45 slots x 300 = 13500 Sapphires

Hero:

To unlock all slots to store equipment found in BG's is 450 Sapphires x 7 rows = 3150 Sapphires

Even a simple thing as changing your hero costs 150 Sapphires, and there is absolutely no difference in which hero you choose

Fortifications:

All the walls, towers etc requires Sapphires...

Walls level 5 x 88 = 35200 Sapphires

Towers level 5 x 8 = 5120 Sapphires

Gates level 5 x 4 = 3840 Sapphires

Sentry, Ballista, Catapult level 5 x 16 =  15360 Sapphires

Thats a whopping 59520 Sapphires, and it's ONLY for the walls, filling up the inside of your castle is unspeakable, just too much to add up...

Sketches:

After continuesly running 2 building ques for over 3 months, you are still FAR from reaching your buildings at max free level of around 20.

There after you can purchase Sketches to upgrade past the free levels at 25 Sapphires each.

Town-hall: 300 sketches x 25 = 7500 Sapphires for the first of 5 extra levels

NOTE!!! This is only for 1 building and only for 1 level increase, There are 6 Farms, 5 Town Houses, 5 Mines, Thieves guild and so much more that ALL require Sketches to upgrade.

Battle Grounds:

I am shocked at the cost of doing PvE in this game. It is a rip-off!!

Be ready to loose those hard earned Legendary units from around level 24 BG's

Be ready to loose the cash-bought Eldrich units from level 13 BG's, and then you didn't even loose a single 'Normal' unit. (I have proof)

As a free player, don't even bother to think about level 100 BG's

Reviving just 100 Pikemen will cost 400 Sapphires

Rest of Game: 

The Black Market is filled with stuff to buy at these ridiculous prices of Sapphires, there are LOADS of boosts and refills to be bought for Sapphires.

Winning Sapphires:

Its a joke, and the joke is on all the players!!

IF and only IF you work hard and spend a LOT of time in game, you MAY make some Sapphires in tournaments, but not even close to any of the costs shown above. Another way is to do Feats, which again pays NOTHING in comparison to what everything costs.

Rewards in this game might just as well be left out, because it doesn't feel 'Rewarding' at all

In short:

As you can see, 127000 Sapphires used to unlock tabs and build walls, and you are still nowhere near completing any building or reviving any troops fallen in BG's

Thats OVER $600 with nothing to show but a browser game...

This is NOT a game to play and enjoy if you are on a tight budget. 

If you decide to play free, you WILL become a resource farm for a wallet warrior.

This game is purely to measure wealth VS wealth

And please Community Managers, we all know you earn free Sapphires to crash this kind of post, but the truth remains!!!

you can easily win free sapphires, how?

all advice is useless, need strategy , needs time need need.... is all useless in reality, respecting the rules you will never have anything

I played a lot in this game, now expect a fantastic comment from someone who knows a few tricks or technical limit to be exploited or some mysterious strategy

remember to respect the rules for fair play or all game is destroyed

fpventer said:

Thats OVER $600 with nothing to show but a browser game...

This is NOT a game to play and enjoy if you are on a tight budget. 

If you decide to play free, you WILL become a resource farm for a wallet warrior.

This game is purely to measure wealth VS wealth

And please Community Managers, we all know you earn free Sapphires to crash this kind of post, but the truth remains!!!

Well, I just bought TW: Warhammer for less than a 10th of that cost. And I predict I will have much more fun with that, long after I stopped played Stormfall somewhere down the line. 

On another note, there is nothing to be that uppset over, there is enough f2p mmo's and such out there that offers an excellent entertainment value for your time spent playing rather than throw your wallet at things. If you interested in some tips, you can drop me a private mail. Not to keen get another week ban for mention other games again :/

Greetings. 

Our game is free-to-play, which means that you can have an access to all game features without spending real money.

And you have a lot of opportunities by default: like slots for Artifacts or Hero Items, like a certain size of Castle, basic bonus from the House of Unity. 

And if you want to have more than you do, you can spend some Sapphires which you earn daily. Just for logging in, completing Quests and Achievements, participating in Tournaments, which don't require any extraordinary actions.

As for the new levels of buildings, they are made to improve the game, to give our players more opportunities to improve their strategies and diversify the gameplay.

As you may have noticed, our new levels of buildings are not the game changers. So those players who don't want to spend their time or money on it, can just play the game as they did before we have implemented this new game feature. 

New levels mostly give you more Resources, more place to store them, more Caravans capacity, etc. For the most of high-level players additional Resources are not necessary, as they raid enough, and use all other opportunities to get them.

Low level players didn't max their buildings yet, so they don't need the new levels anymore.

Yes, players who spend money on the game, can receive the benefits from the new levels, but as I said, we designed them to not be a game changer. If a coiner has more Resources, would it harm you? 

And of course, we made sure that the new levels will be reachable for active players, who receive big Sapphire rewards from Tournaments, place in Top Rankings, complete Achievements, capture Sapphire Settlements, etc. It will take a lot of time and efforts, and probably you would prefer another ways to spend your earned Sapphires, but we made it possible for everyone to achieve new levels.

It's only your choice how to play. You can always skip the update you don't like. You can play as usual, or you can use some benefits of new features. It's up to you.

Our game is not about building the greatest Castle ever in one day. Of course, the amount of Sapphires you receive daily is not so big. However, you can accumulate a lot of them in several months, in a year, or so. 

As for the BGs, they require planing and strategical approach. You can't just send all you have and receive twice more. That's not how the BGs work. It may seem so simple when you see someone's screenshots with thousands of Units, but it's the result of a hard work.

What I wanted to say is that our game is not casual. It's a hardcore strategy, and it will take some time and efforts to become one of the best here. However, don't forget that there will always be some players, who have higher walls, more Units, more knowledge. You can't compete them without experience. Sapphires can't make you a great games. Only your gaming experience can.

-Logging in EVERY day for 90 days, no matter what life hands you awards you 600 Sapphires... WOW

-There is no Quest or Achievement that gives Sapphires, and Feats of Valor gives a Tiny bit of Sapphires ONCE-OFF, and then? What about after achieving, no more Sapphires ever? 

-Participating in Tournaments MAY get you 600 Sapphires a month with Hard work, this means in 60-80 MONTHS I can at last upgrade House of Unity only?

-I am unable to see how improving building levels diversifies this game or improves strategy...

-How do you skip an update? Mostly we have already figured out what changed before the update report hits the forum.

-Collecting Sapphires over several months, a year you say? We both know that would hardly cover a single BG loss...

-Hardcore strategy game? Okay...

-Only gaming experience can make you a great player? In a game RULED by coiners, that's what your reply is? LoL

Alyona Kolomiitseva said:

Yes, players who spend money on the game, can receive the benefits from the new levels, but as I said, we designed them to not be a game changer. If a coiner has more Resources, would it harm you? 

And of course, we made sure that the new levels will be reachable for active players, who receive big Sapphire rewards from Tournaments, place in Top Rankings, complete Achievements, capture Sapphire Settlements, etc. It will take a lot of time and efforts, and probably you would prefer another ways to spend your earned Sapphires, but we made it possible for everyone to achieve new levels.

Our game is not about building the greatest Castle ever in one day. Of course, the amount of Sapphires you receive daily is not so big. However, you can accumulate a lot of them in several months, in a year, or so. 

As for the BGs, they require planing and strategical approach. You can't just send all you have and receive twice more. That's not how the BGs work. It may seem so simple when you see someone's screenshots with thousands of Units, but it's the result of a hard work.

What I wanted to say is that our game is not casual. It's a hardcore strategy, and it will take some time and efforts to become one of the best here. However, don't forget that there will always be some players, who have higher walls, more Units, more knowledge. You can't compete them without experience. Sapphires can't make you a great games. Only your gaming experience can.

Well, someone coins and upgrade their farms over level 20, and they get a significant food boost. Allow for bigger armies, without the need to have to constant raid for food to build more. Removing atrition dude to lack of food already gave a big boon to coiners. 

I played for soon a year now, I don't really know where those daily sapphires is. Twice due to rl I missed out on the 90 day reward. And if you manage to get to 90 days, thats like 6 sapphires a day. I upgraded just about all my buildings to max level appart from house of unity. Spending on sketches to upgrade further seems rather rude kinda, because good chance once you reach that level, you already sunk cash into your game, so it feels like you keep get milked. 

A lot of the results from the pvp tournaments is due to win trading and abuse of alts and boots. You want easy pvp points? Send x units to my alt at this location and similar. I still got lots of bots/farms around me, that never been removed or done anything with. Even first reported back in June last year. I keep raid them for units and spies, lots of spies. Then siege them for free resources. Above me and beneath me there is two HUGE bot lines. They been reported and posted about on the forums over and over. Never done anything with. Once I said in chat in league I wished all these bots was removed and another league member said "hope not", because then he didnt know what to do to get resources. See how deep tactics and strategy run in your game?

I guess no one really said they should send all you got to bg's and recieve twice more. It wouldn't hurt to end up in the posetive and not worse off than you started out though.

You said in other posts before you play all the Plarium games, so a question. What level are you in Stormfall, what level is your highest BG and how big was your last big payout in resource worth Vs how many resources you spent to get it?

No matter how good you at this game and experience you got. You can't compete vs a big coiner with experience alone. Unless you ready to sink a big wad of cash into this game, you not competive. Just look at how many people keep refresh the dragon with sapphires during the dragon tournies as example.  

prices are crazy, you never get in step of feeling satisfied, need to spend more and more, this is a wait game or spend and spend always

Whereas everything is designed not for the game (fun / good game) but psychology to fool players with alts and new traps for spend more, can not study to make happy to participate and play to make war? 7 of 10 ppl in all rank/tournament is bogus results (atls and tricks)

1-2 years for grown and troops, 2 minutes (if boost and opponent is near or wait 1day  to hit 1 day to return, pay pay  only always pay)

see and read well this link

Now ask the psychologist Plarium the reactions it causes in a person who undergoes this, after read all forum

you can play 24/24h but do not get anything, click and wait click and wait .... if you pay everything right away and more (if pay for sapphire)

this game is most certainly not free to play.