Personaly I feel Plarium is out of touch with the community and the players. We get changes and updates, that feel little more than a push to spend more sapphires. You know something isn't right when the best thing that happend in long time is the resource slider for resource packs.

Running a game such as this is not a democracy, that doesn't work, but you need to be more on the ball with what the players want and would like to see, if you want your company to do better too. Post threads on the forums and ask for feedback doesn't work because its so few that respond to them, and it doesn't really give a view on what the players like or want. You can't let the players run the business, but you can listen to them to try make the business do better.

If you really want to listen to the community for feedback, invite them for a meeting. Like make a invite to the top 15-20 league marshals in the game. Have it on teamspeak, ventrilo, mumble or something. Have them bring questions to start with, give those to a moderator. You sort through the questions to avoid the same topics get brought up over and over. Then discuss.... and bring the results to Plarium afterwards. Post the meeting on soundcloud for everyone to listen to afterwards.

If they could spawned a test server where all changes was available first with a feedback system of how did you like them inside the game could helped too. But I guess that can be hard as the changes basicaly happen on all the different Plarium games just different versions of them. So things we might reflect badly towards in Stormfall not necessary get same attention in some other.

Plarium really need to ask themselfs a few questions.

- Why do people play games?

- Is our games fun to play?

- Does these changes make it more fun to play?

Really need to expand on the things that make the game more fun to play and you see more players staying and get invested over time. And TIME is the most valuable assets you can find with a player, because there is just so much time to go around to spend playing. If you get knocked down while playing you don't want to spend weeks and months to get back to where you was, but that is for another discussion.

Mehnslayer said:

But regardless of that. I feel from both Gadheras and DJ that you would rather have a select few that would have a high priority, those people (could be moderators) or experienced players and would take the best suggestions or the communities concerns/issues/problems directly to Plarium for a priority. 

Here is another suggestion, another forum/chat room is set up (Don't know how important this would be to Plarium) and said "elite" players would have access directly to the community managers along with other people that have access, it should all be logged so that all players there can disagree/agree with each other and come out with a mutual agreement on the direction of an update the community wants. 

As I said above, have a sit down with the top league Marshals for feedback and input. Not because I have such a great love for any of them, but if you running a top league, you deal with a lot of players, and issues the game bring, and you well into the meta of the game too. These are the players Plarium should do a sit down with and listen to feedback from. I don't want to label them elite players, they just players that know the game the most. And you can't really have a meeting etc with to many people either, it get to much noise.

Isn't there anything such us a guy with some pull in Plarium that could attend such a meeting, Im afraid of use the term dev, because Plarium seems to be more run like a hardcore business rather than devs passionate about their work and product. As a long term eve-online player I guess I spoilt in the way the devs interact with the players. You don't really want a process of go to a guy that go to another guy that go to another guy. You want it directly from the horses mouth so to speak. There must be sombody out ther that actually talk for Plarium right? That doesn't necessary have someone over him that keep say no, no, no, no, no, no........

I don't necessary refer to someone that goes "Oh you want a pink unicorn in the game? Sure I fix that"... but not someone that basicaly have to ask their dad's permission to take the car for a spin either.

And for the love of all good, keep things transparent.

Nice topic Lord Mehnslayer!

Lady Shewuvsyou,

In my opinion I think that developers should be reachable as well. The game's made for the players after all, and not the developers I assume. I would love to discuss that with Lord Oberon and I surely will. Reckon that!  Speaking of our wise Lord Oberon, please do not underestimate him. I can imagine that he's busy with a lot of things, and thus not always able to reply to everything. I do trust him well, and I'm assured that when he says he'll pass an idea through he surely does so.

On the other side, I completely understand the frustrations of waiting for a response or not getting one at all. I've had to deal with that lots of times but due to that, I have learned that patience is an important virtue. And if patience doesn't affect anything, then acting might aid you.

Good luck,

>> SlopranoDark

Greetings, m'lady Shewuvsyou,

"Implying Lord Oberon is a single individual, however he or she is most likely not a single entity operating a single account. The variation in text formatting, spelling and grammatical accuracy, overall disposition on issues and the singular reference to posts I alone have made have led me to believe that all of the staff use the single administrator account to conduct their business. So you don't get confused however, was that my suggestion is for the entire staff to have their separate accounts and actually make use of them."

That is correct. I think you've got a point there. I will inform Oberon about this!

"To your earlier point, this game is not made for the players. People often confuse these relationships and presume (like you did) there to be some sort of personal bond. While there can be good relations between the players and the game's overlords, you need to understand that this is a business. They're here to make money. As a developer you might genuinely enjoy making the game and seeing it thrive, but ultimately you don't want to do it for free and do expect some measure of income or profit margin in return. This distinction is often confused by people who forget that this is just good business in a capitalist economy."

This is true, and not so true at the same time. Unfortunately money has blinded actually about all the companies. Not just the companies are the ones that seek for coin, trust me, even individuals made their money gone to their heads. That is one thing I dislike about the world's economy system. Another thing that bothers me about money, is the difference between the exaggerated rich people, and the poor. Ever heard of the sentence 'Love makes blind?' Trust me, so does money.

But that being said, if it came to me, I would be one trying to keep balance between the amount of money I had and the joy people gain from my invests. What I tried to say with my statement: 'The game is made for players after all' is that the game is meant for the players. If the developers made a game like that, only interesting for their selves, then not much people would consider playing it, right?

But this does not mean that the companies are always heartless. To me, Plarium's one of the few companies actually caring for their customers. As example, I used to send suggestions through the support team. They were so kind! I still have tickets open, so proof is there! They all read my ideas and told me they were great and being passed on. It was really good to see such a great support team. 

My apologies for any failures at English, I am still a Dutchman. 

Glad to have read your opinion,

>> SlopranoDark

I can relate all this ongoing discussion to development cycle of a product where customer feedback is required.

When a product (i.e. stormfall) is developed, it is the customers (players in this case) who decide the direction of the product. The future requirements/updates are based on the feedback of the customer. Instead what we see here that players have constantly expressed their desire for certain features and the moderators of this forum (kind of HR here) keep stating that the ideas have been put forward to the project manager (i.e. Lord Oberon). What happens in the end is the ideas/requirements that have been put forward here in forum stay in the forum and instead a new functionality comes along which is akin to saying "Hey you asked for A but we added B as it is beneficial for us".

It is indisputable that "Change the Rank at which Beacon Defence becomes visible" functionality is one of the most emphasized upon update here on forum and I am sure Marshal/Captains of every beacon holding leagues would want this feature but it has been months and still it has not been added (this is just one of many examples). This update is not huge by any means but it raises a big question and the root cause of the problem/discussion going on here "Do even plarium care about the players feedback?". 

If they want to adhere to their own requirements then there is no need for this discussion at all. This forum should just be for the game discussion between players and for learning purposes. The developers would then be bringing updates to the game which they see fit for their business model and players will have to accept that. This has been the case from what I have been seeing.

Integration of experienced players and community to bring about  important/new updates is extremely beneficial in the long run for both plarium and the players. I am by no means suggesting that full control should be handed over to the players regarding which updates should be coming in but maybe a middle ground could be reached where the requirements of players are taken into fair consideration. On the other hand how things have been run till now I am certain that plarium would settle for lesser ground (i.e. keep doing what they have been doing till now) but I would be happy if I am proven wrong.

Thank you all for taking the time to reply in this thread. I'm grateful for your feedback and eager to discuss all of these critically important issues. I'd like to apologize for allowing a situation in which you feel a lack of communication between yourselves and our game developers.

As for the recent updates, we realize that some of them weren't exactly popular, but they needed to be done. With Hamlets, for instance, we needed them because we wanted to have players actually fight for resources. We didn't like the idea of having 1 pikeman guarding a settlement and collecting a lot of resources. So we came up with Hamlets. The other much disliked updates were various Items. What we'd like to stress is that they weren't meant to change the game and they don't actually widen the gap between the coiners and non coiners. They were supposed to be fun and fill the void between "big" updates, like the one we're going to release in the early 2016 and that will be announced later.

Regarding the suggestion to change the Rank at which Beacon Defence becomes visible, our dev team has a big task to change the league control settings and this suggestion is included there and will be implemented as part of the bigger task, hence the delay in implementation. Our dev team is not very numerous and we simply are unable to implement the requested changes momentarily. Also, when I say that I've forwarded your ideas to Development, it means that we'll investigate those game elements which you feel need improvement. Sometimes, we may change those elements in other ways which still resolve your concerns.

shewuvsyou said:

Implying Lord Oberon is a single individual, however he or she is most likely not a single entity operating a single account. The variation in text formatting, spelling and grammatical accuracy, overall disposition on issues and the singular reference to posts I alone have made have led me to believe that all of the staff use the single administrator account to conduct their business. So you don't get confused however, was that my suggestion is for the entire staff to have their separate accounts and actually make use of them.

To your earlier point, this game is not made for the players. People often confuse these relationships and presume (like you did) there to be some sort of personal bond. While there can be good relations between the players and the game's overlords, you need to understand that this is a business. They're here to make money. As a developer you might genuinely enjoy making the game and seeing it thrive, but ultimately you don't want to do it for free and do expect some measure of income or profit margin in return. This distinction is often confused by people who forget that this is just good business in a capitalist economy.

I am a Plarium collective persona, expressing Plarium’s official positions and listening to you, our players, for feedback regarding new features, suggestions, questions and concerns. All of this feedback is relayed to our development team through various channels.

The game is made for the players. Players the backbone of the game, and we share ownership. This being said, in order to provide this game to all players, certain parameters or features within the game must have a cost value. This is not an excuse; but a statement of fact. Without making profit, we would not be able to employ the incredibly devoted employees that we do and keep the game running and growing.

Lord Oberon said:

shewuvsyou said:

Implying Lord Oberon is a single individual, however he or she is most likely not a single entity operating a single account. The variation in text formatting, spelling and grammatical accuracy, overall disposition on issues and the singular reference to posts I alone have made have led me to believe that all of the staff use the single administrator account to conduct their business. So you don't get confused however, was that my suggestion is for the entire staff to have their separate accounts and actually make use of them.

To your earlier point, this game is not made for the players. People often confuse these relationships and presume (like you did) there to be some sort of personal bond. While there can be good relations between the players and the game's overlords, you need to understand that this is a business. They're here to make money. As a developer you might genuinely enjoy making the game and seeing it thrive, but ultimately you don't want to do it for free and do expect some measure of income or profit margin in return. This distinction is often confused by people who forget that this is just good business in a capitalist economy.

I am a Plarium collective persona, expressing Plarium’s official positions and listening to you, our players, for feedback regarding new features, suggestions, questions and concerns. All of this feedback is relayed to our development team through various channels.

The game is made for the players. Players the backbone of the game, and we share ownership. This being said, in order to provide this game to all players, certain parameters or features within the game must have a cost value. This is not an excuse; but a statement of fact. Without making profit, we would not be able to employ the incredibly devoted employees that we do and keep the game running and growing.

It can be very hard to relate to someone with many persona though. You can have a thread of discussion and different posts of Oberon in that thread is by different people? Im pritty sure the community would be more greatfull and appriciate it more if Oberon's splitt personalities got splitt up in differnet people that you could actually address? No one asking about full names and such, but just someone unique to address. Would also bring some form of acountability to the person.

No one is really disagreeing with the fact that the game need a revenue model. Its a business, people need to get paid wages, bills to paid and so on, what many (or at least players I talked with ingame) does question is the model though. Lately it feelt like Plarium just interested in fleece the players as much as possible. I got bills to pay too, I can't afford spend 99 USD worth on best deasl I get flashed in my face all the time. If I drop 20 USD a month or so on this game, that is what I can justify afford on this game.

Wouldn't it be better to sit down with the players ask they what they want, what they interested in spend on, what they don't like to spend on at all and so on ? I don't know but from my point of view, it would be much better to have a lot of players spend some each than a few spend a lot. The biggest marketing force you can have to bring in new players into this game, is word of mouth and social media. And the same work the other way too. Happy players bring more player, uppset players on the other hand.. bad for business.

Mehnslayer said:

I personally am very happy that this topic is getting the attention it is and could possibly be a stepping stone for all parties involved.

It seems to me that player's don't care if something has a sapphire tag on it or is exclusive to coiners, as long as it is something that the community wants or has a middle ground. What if something like the changing the rank at which beacon defense can be seen had a 3k sapphire price tag, I don't think anyone would care that much, they would be more happy they are being listened to and have that feature included in the game. I am pretty sure most big league marshals and or captains can give away 3k sapphires. This is only an example of a possible middle ground.

How about give each league a own bank that members of could donate sapphires into for league use. Just becaus you create a league and is a league marshall doesn't really make you rich. Or how about trade/donate sapphires to other players as well.

Also I would believe players more happy about pay for value. I tend to compare what can I get for the cost of things. Its like, hmm, buy a fireball,or buy a burger and a coke? The cost of the boosts and enhancers, is way to high for their value. Although I found myself spend on a resource booster once in a while. Also I remember all the posts about players want the units return to catacombs by default, trained units and so on. And the responses of no we cant do that, you should be active play the game and so on. Then we got that scroll you can pay for that will do it for a limited time. Such things just feel like getting peed on tbh. Make it a part of the core mechanics of the game and you would seen more fights too.

If they had like a subscription package that included like active paragon, maybe some xp boost, and you wouldn't miss daily loyality roll if you missed a day. I would throw my money at them. (if it came at a competive price to other mmos out there).

I would really love to see statistics from Plarium what the players spend money on in the shop, because that should be easy data for them to pull.

@Shewuvsyou, the point you were making was "this game is not made for the players.", which I find strange. To put it simply the game is 50% for the players and 50% for the developers. We benefit from each other. Players are being entertained playing the game, and they support the game via money and with their help we are able to maintain the game and people who are making the game. 

Mehnslayer said:

I think most popular MMO games survive purely on the fact that they do focus so much on the community, the word "ethical" microtransactions gets thrown around a lot with F2P mmo's

Well there is microtransactions and there is microtransactions. Things that doesn't affect the sandbox, (and yes Stormfall is a sandbox), things that appeal to a players vanity, things that save you time (grind vs time/effort, like xp boosters and similar). You will find players willing to spend money when there is value to be had or buying into their vanity of "oh that cool , I want that.).

Basically, what I'm trying to say, is why can't we talk to the developers and hear what they have to say about issues.

We understand your desire to communicate directly with the people who are making the game. It is for this reason that we established the Community Management department. The dev team is solely responsible for the development, implementation, and maintenance of all game features and updates. Due to the massive scale of our games, it is not possible for our development team to communicate directly with the community. It is our job to take a step back, analyze all player comments, and make smart choices about what we can and can’t do to improve the game.

Or why can't we have elected community members chosen to relay our concerns directly?

You can do that, and it's entirely up to you. You can use this forum or any other preferred means to vote. You together can prepare a list of questions you have and we would gladly prepare an official reply for you.

However, the way hamlets were implemented was incredibly heavy handed and no real consideration was put forth into why they should work. 

I absolutely agree with that and would like to apologize for the mistakes in communication. We will do our utmost to ensure that we do better in providing you with the most relevant information regarding our plans and future updates. The next big update will be properly announced before release. 

Mehnslayer said:

Gadheras said:

Mehnslayer said:

I think most popular MMO games survive purely on the fact that they do focus so much on the community, the word "ethical" microtransactions gets thrown around a lot with F2P mmo's

Well there is microtransactions and there is microtransactions. Things that doesn't affect the sandbox, (and yes Stormfall is a sandbox), things that appeal to a players vanity, things that save you time (grind vs time/effort, like xp boosters and similar). You will find players willing to spend money when there is value to be had or buying into their vanity of "oh that cool , I want that.).

That is something I have brought up previously, The response I got was they attempted to make vanity items with the improvements, I would debate however. As for the microtransactions, the word "micro" means small or insignificant, a lot of companies claim to have microtransactions  but honestly i'm not sure how many games actually have "micro"transactions anymore... I'm not sure Plarium could be considered "micro" because some of their bundles are a fortnights pay for a person. 

By chance I stumbled over this on steam lol @ Pay2Win: The Tricks Exposed,

Has anything come about from this forum post? Are any of the suggestions form the players being considered such as a council of influential players in the game to discuss the game with plarium or experienced Stormfall players to be given a moderator tag?

Mehnslayer said:

Skycooldude said:

Has anything come about from this forum post? Are any of the suggestions form the players being considered such as a council of influential players in the game to discuss the game with plarium or experienced Stormfall players to be given a moderator tag?

There was something I discussed with Oberon yesterday, however I feel with the response I got it is better if he chooses to release the information or not

Should I be looking to this forum for  a response or would he create another thread if he chose to release the information?

At the moment we are working on a better way to communicate with the community. 

The forum mod tag will only be given to active forum users who enjoy helping fellow players out and care about the state of these Forums.

As for the player suggestions in this thread, yes, some of them are being considered. 

Maybe an English/soccer fan can answer that. But Plarium is actively trying to improve the methods of communication between the community and the development team. I personally enjoy moderating for Plarium as a company, however everything can be improved to be more reliable/faster etc...

The company suffers from the same problems that a lot of game companies, and that seems to be at least from my perspective, is the developers (the guys that code etc...) have different views from the community in terms of how they want the game to look. However, the developers do make a lot of changes for the community and are listening. 

I've absolutely no idea who this lord Louis Van Gall is. 

I recommend that you read this forum more to form your own opinion on the community and the issues that we're facing. Feel free to comment when you are ready 

Lord DJMoody, 

The information about beacons isn't confidential. I'm not entirely sure what happened, but I assume that a league member wrote to Plarium  Helpdesk or one of the community managers and asked when new beacons will be released. The only answer he or she could have received is "Soon". Anyone could have gotten the same answer and I don't think it gives any strategic advantage to the person who received it.