On a slightly different note:

Would it be possible to incorporate a way for more players to contribute sapphires towards upgrades? Perhaps some form of guild sapphire bank would serve this purpose. 

I appreciate that you need an income stream to keep the game running and have no objections to that. However most people don't want to spend that many sapphires at once, especially on something that can be downgraded and the sapphires wasted. So providing some sort of mechanism to allow more players to contribute to each upgrade would be helpful. At the moment the options are either 1)pull out lots of sapphires from a handful of players to achieve the upgrades and boost to get to the next safe point - which isnt an option for man. or 2)a very long and tedious grind to acquire the glory points to do the same which doesn't really contribute much to your revenue stream.

If you feel that the sapphires absolutely must be purchased and not come out of ingame generated rewards, then perhaps you could have a purchase sapphires for guildbank option rather than a simple transfer of x sapphires. Or when you purchase any amount of sapphires, you have an option - donate x sapphires to guildbank. Either of these would multiple players to contribute.

For the same financial reasons, it would seem to make sense to have more safe levels than 5 and 8. If combined with the above features, then this would give players and leagues and incentive to upgrade the fortress and would surely enhance your revenue stream rather than reduce it.

You might reply by saying that this option would provide a limited and very short term boost. this is true in terms of immediate fortress construction- however new leagues are always forming and those that already have a fortress will have an incentive to spend on knowledge upgrades so you would have some level of sustained spending.

Question for Oberon.

Did you intentionally use the raid mechanic for the Fortress battles?

If you did could you explain why? It seems totally feature breaking from where I am sitting.

If this doesn't make sense to you, please get another Oberon personality to answer it (its not a stupid question that doesn't make sense).

Drogar61 said:

Lord Oberon said:

Don't be so harsh, please. There's absolutely no need for this kind of tone here. We are not going to make any excuses at all. If anything, we are very proud of the job we did on the Fortresses and expect some gratitude in return. That would be nice. 

Bravo.

Lord Oberon, your love for money is extreme and your dedication is commendable. Do not let evil players to interfere you in your moment of glory as you did the fortress that serves no purpose, pardon, which serves to collect the rest of money from those who are still paying. You have the Russians who love this game and on whose server is certainly more than 3000 active players, as there are on this server.

If this is not the long-awaited upgrade, eagerly expecting it.

Remember, nobody can hate you as much as you can love yourself.

Hold on to these moments, do not listen to anybody nor do now, and bravely lead us into the dark future of Darkshrine. It is essential that all is free. Of course, you can not forbid anyone to pay if they want to. And do not.

What is important is that the game has more meaning. In the extreme case, at least for you.

Cheers! 

You are being sarcastic, aren't you? It wasn't funny to begin with and now it's getting old.  

Lord Oberon said:

Gadheras said:

Lord Oberon said:

You are being sarcastic, aren't you? It wasn't funny to begin with and now it's getting old.  

Well, thing is opinions is like ......... and everyone got one. You might not necessary like it, but have to accept it or start censor heavily what people can post or not (Which would breed heavy discontent). There is also those that agree on and like what you might not like as well. Ever since I started post on this forums, I got quite a few private responses on posts, both agreeing on what I posted and some discussing things I posted. No hate mail yet so I guess that is a pluss :p

If you can keep a f2p game a weighted scale between grind and coining, you can make a happy place you know. (or at least a content one).

 

We don't like sarcastic offtopic comments that bring nothing worthwhile to the discussion of the subject. 

I've seen very good suggestions in this thread and one of them will be implemented. So let's just keep it on topic and discuss how we can realistically make the Fortresses better. I will be deleting further offtopic messages. 

I really be happy if you do same in all threads, specially when you and moderators made just sarcastic offtopic comments and killed further discussion without any conclusion.

I believe that many of us (just few of players population) came to forum to make game better with honest intentions, but something went wrong.

If you really think that we are guilty for that I have only one suggestion: I have really smarter things in life than writing on this forum where no one of our suggestion didn't implement, except if you already planned to implement it. And usually implementation wasn't what we asked but what you wanted or knew to implement, but you used some of our posts to say we implemented what you wanted.

That is sarcasm, and this post is criticism.

One thing more, your answer on this thread is also offtopic - you could/should to make new thread to warn all of us who are planned to be banned.  To be clear next is your words on this topic

"I would like to start my response by stating some facts. Lords and Ladies, I remind you that Stormfall is a free-to play game.

In the free-to-play model certain features within the game must have a cost value because developers must make profit to keep the game running and growing.

At the same we have made it possible for the players to earn their way up and unlock features at a slower pace for free. It may be time consuming but it is a perfectly viable way to play the game. If you feel like paying for your progress, the game is not stopping you, if you don't believe in paying for a free-to-play game, don't pay. We are not going to make apologetic statements for making some aspects of the game available for real world money. "

I'm not guilty, maybe my IQ is.

Would it be possible to incorporate a way for more players to contribute sapphires towards upgrades? Perhaps some form of guild sapphire bank would serve this purpose. 

My Lord, this sounds good in theory, but in reality this feature will get abused by alts one way or another. 

1)pull out lots of sapphires from a handful of players to achieve the upgrades and boost to get to the next safe point - which isnt an option for man. or 2)a very long and tedious grind to acquire the glory points to do the same which doesn't really contribute much to your revenue stream.

I think that leagues should set long term goals. Upgrading the Fortress shouldn't be immediate. It's a task for an entire league to work on. At the same time this is a realistic task worth accomplishing. 

Lord Oberon said:

Would it be possible to incorporate a way for more players to contribute sapphires towards upgrades? Perhaps some form of guild sapphire bank would serve this purpose. 

My Lord, this sounds good in theory, but in reality this feature will get abused by alts one way or another. 

Give us a league bank we can send sapphires to. Sapphires in the league bank only  possible to spend on league/fortress upgrades. 

Fortress should be collective castle, with same potential as our castles like infirmary and warning system about attacks.

I'm for unlimited league attack in that case. Why?

If we could be informed that some attack comes we could decide do we defend fortress or dodge attack. Also, as attacker you will have chance to focus attack on one place instead of running over map and waiting your troops back after any serious attack.

I don't like current battle mechanics but if you don't want to change that this is just vote for changing - we need more real outcome from battles.

Globally, it is time to make some changes in battles where 80+ level player attacks 50- level player, like percentage decreasing of attackers power. Fortress could be nice place for implementing such logic.

Currently, top leagues will leave in peace as usual, and smaller leagues will keep nothing in fortress, so as with hamlets this will not bring any new activities.

Mentioned alts are big problem still, not just for fortress sapps, but they will be used for testing fortresses, too. Very soon we will see that.

Lord Oberon said:

Would it be possible to incorporate a way for more players to contribute sapphires towards upgrades? Perhaps some form of guild sapphire bank would serve this purpose. 

My Lord, this sounds good in theory, but in reality this feature will get abused by alts one way or another. 

Give us a league bank we can send sapphires to. Sapphires in the league bank only  possible to spend on league/fortress upgrades. 

I don't really see how that can be abused big time by alts.

I don't really see how that can be abused big time by alts.

1. Create a dozen of alts, level them up, receive Sapphires from tutorial quests.

2. Accept your alts to your league, deposit their Sapphires to the bank, kick your alts from the league

3. Repeat till the desired result is achieved.

This sounds like a time-consuming scheme but you won't believe what some players do in attempts to gain an unfair advantage. 

I'm not saying that everyone is like this, but we'd rather not risk creating an environment where such stunts would be possible. 

Lord Oberon said:

I don't really see how that can be abused big time by alts.

1. Create a dozen of alts, level them up, receive Sapphires from tutorial quests.

2. Accept your alts to your league, deposit their Sapphires to the bank, kick your alts from the league

3. Repeat till the desired result is achieved.

This sounds like a time-consuming scheme but you won't believe what some players do in attempts to gain an unfair advantage. 

I'm not saying that everyone is like this, but we'd rather not risk creating an environment where such stunts would be possible. 

If sapphires contributed to guild bank are limited to purchased sapphires, then alts arent really a problem as a player has a finite wallet capacity whether spent on one account, or through multiple. It may be a technical development problem, but it isnt an alt problem.

The current upgrade setup allows players with big wallets to bypass the long upgrade process, without allowing other players with smaller wallets to pool resources to do the same.

Lord Oberon said:

I don't really see how that can be abused big time by alts.

1. Create a dozen of alts, level them up, receive Sapphires from tutorial quests.

2. Accept your alts to your league, deposit their Sapphires to the bank, kick your alts from the league

3. Repeat till the desired result is achieved.

This sounds like a time-consuming scheme but you won't believe what some players do in attempts to gain an unfair advantage. 

I'm not saying that everyone is like this, but we'd rather not risk creating an environment where such stunts would be possible. 

Way to go Mr. Oberon. On another thread the great Oberon has repeatedly mentioned that alts are not as big of a 

problem as what players think of them and plarium is doing everything to solve the issues of alts. Now in this thread we see a completely contradicting statement.  

Bend it like Oberon. 

Lord Oberon said:

I don't really see how that can be abused big time by alts.

1. Create a dozen of alts, level them up, receive Sapphires from tutorial quests.

2. Accept your alts to your league, deposit their Sapphires to the bank, kick your alts from the league

3. Repeat till the desired result is achieved.

This sounds like a time-consuming scheme but you won't believe what some players do in attempts to gain an unfair advantage. 

I'm not saying that everyone is like this, but we'd rather not risk creating an environment where such stunts would be possible. 

Then make it so, only a player of at least level 50 and who spend at least 7 days in the league is able to send sapphires to the bank. Come on here man, work with us. There is HUGE alt armies out there ready to pounce on Fortress's that is a much bigger concern imho. Give Fortress's DEF buff already.

On another note.. maybe you should just open the gates of hades and let players create as many alts they desire to play, so everyone is on a equal footing. There is after all just so many hours a day someone can sit in front of the screen. 

That alts can be somewhat hard to identify and deal with one thing, but the huge lines of bots found in Stormfall that not done anything with since like forever. And that been reported and petitioned about over and over and over is a disgrace.

It seems pretty clear:

Infirmary,

Warning system,

More milestone levels (Maybe 11, 14, 17 - I'm sure the upgrade time increases exponentially, so the interval shouldn't increase as well),

defense bonus (attacking another leagues fortress should be very risky)

defense statistics.

By the way, I hope weekly top ten players get stacks of glory points.  

Lord Oberon said:

Would it be possible to incorporate a way for more players to contribute sapphires towards upgrades? Perhaps some form of guild sapphire bank would serve this purpose. 

My Lord, this sounds good in theory, but in reality this feature will get abused by alts one way or another. 

this sounds like alts welcome but only if they pay, not see improvements in any direction as not to encourage alt, if you prefer $ 100 every 100 players instead of $ 1 every 10,000 players leads me draw conclusions= very few and short-term players

anyway nice addition but going the wrong way for f2p, this f2p (frustration-to-play) requires 1 year(31,536K seconds) to build 1 second to destroy or pay! This is the ratio 31,536K to 1.... same to:  pay to F2P

in this direction add more things (incomplete) and you will have more complaints

Hey, 

serious Plarium ? League Beacon Event was 70 Glory points at all ? i would accept it when 70 from ea Member but this is really a JOKE!

Also now Solo Event there are no Glory Points. so for all small Leagues wihtout Saps investing you get not enough glory points for next level.. 

except maybe next year ;) 

It's a long term challenge for 5+ years ? if you don't invest Saphires its mission impossible

Lets see we got 70 Points.. means 200 Leagues Event for 14000 Glory Points if we reach the 70 in ea Event. For Level 5 to 6 you need 16800 Points. 

have fun on the long term challenge.. 

We saw all of your responses. We also understand we can see the units in our fortress. What we can't see is the total defense points there. There is no good reason to withhold that item for us. We believe there is enough sapphire purchases involved for you to give in on that one item. Why make us work so hard to determine the actual amount of units in points in our Fortress. Please add that feature for us. 

You cannot be so sure about the future amounts of Points that you will receive or the frequency of the Events and Tournaments. 

Tommy Lee said:

We saw all of your responses. We also understand we can see the units in our fortress. What we can't see is the total defense points there. There is no good reason to withhold that item for us. We believe there is enough sapphire purchases involved for you to give in on that one item. Why make us work so hard to determine the actual amount of units in points in our Fortress. Please add that feature for us. 

Thanks

Apparently you haven't seen all of my responses. In one or two of them I mentioned that we are working on the fix that would make total defense points of a Fortress visible. 

Please rest assured that this feature will be added in one of the next updates.