Alyona Kolomiitseva said:

wesleypringle1 said:

This Game has been all about the money too call it a strategy Game is a joke,  Unless having tons of money  to throw away daily is considered a strategy. years ago this game was worth playing  now it's not unless you enjoy paying.

It's not necessary to buiy Sapphires. There are many players who have mastered the game without spending money. You can get free Sapphires in the game. But if you feel that you need more, of you want to progress faster, then you can buy some of our Offers.

No it's not necessary to buy sapphires and as for mastering the Game I have been Playing Stormfall in the Facebook App for about 4 years Now and (Back in the days it wasn't such a sinkhole for money) I have a level 83 castle and have been Marshal to two different Leagues. Not much I don't know about this game including how much of a waste of time it has been since the developers decided to go all out for the cash. 

I am very disappointed that the points towards upgrading levels have been taken away from the 'quest' parts of the game. At least it made them worth doing. Not now though. The annoying pop up in the bottom corner drives me nuts and there is never any break between tournaments. This gives no time to build up unless you are spending loads of money, which I cannot. If it carries on this way I will have to quit playing. It is not as enjoyable as it was some months ago.

Nemanja said:

My Lords,

I'm playing Stormfall almost five years. I can remember how hard it was to reach lvl 80 before. There were only few occasions for earning sapphires and careful planing was crucial. Nowadays its much easier. All new players can reach lvl 30 during one day and train significant troops even during Weor protecting period. So, Stormfall now and before. I believe its getting better, thanks to new ideas and players suggestions.

Not sure how that is really better but ...

Although I use them, I prefer when we did not have boosts and gateways. I miss the excitement of setting up the wall before the hit came or trying to figure out when a player was on.

My Lords,

reglob said:

Make Sieges mean something! Don't let a player raid, Fire Ball, etc. while under siege. Make them breakout first, or someone break them out. Make Sieges count.

Wrong thread, also if you could perma siege someone without them able to do much. They would quit the game, and that would be bad for business. so they wont do that.

i think the game has evolved beyond me as a player.

what once attracted me to this game no longer exists.

what used to take strategy and timing now takes a credit card.  diplomacy no longer matters beyond safe guarding a beacon.  

with catacombs holding 100% of a castles defense, i cant find a reason to raid. With battlegrounds being nerfed, i cant find a reason to play them.  With tournaments threshold set so high i can never achieve them, i cant find a reason to try. 

with the length it takes to build an army, i cant find a worthy cause for which to slaughter them.  its not worth my time to attack.

the only reason i find to play the game is to lead my league and teach the new players.  but that costs nothing. 

so is plarium making money off of my by all of these changes?  no. 

the question now, as  i teach these new players, do i teach them not to spend sapphires as i have learned?

this is the business model plarium has created.  i am not a top league, we have no need to spend.  and now we have no need to play.

Alyona Kolomiitseva said:

Gadheras said:

I would be carefull about mention the "get free sapphires" aspect of the game, because end of the day, that is a drop in the ocean and that drop cost you an awfull lot of time to even get.

Yeah, it's not an easy task - to earn them. What I meant in my comment is that you don't have to buy them with money, but with your time and efforts.

But the return based on what you have to give up generally does not balance out. 

My thoughts on this thread -- too many global events -- when I started global tournaments were a couple of times a month -- now we often have 3 at a time.  

When they (global events)  were less frequent they were special and players would plan for them - now, you no longer have to plan -- just whip out the credit card and buy your way into the top 10.

Speacking about BG ...it is eassier becouse we can see the truppes now, but the rewards are smaller.

For exemple this days i played BG ...i earned 700k XP . I invested 20mil off in BG and no big reward!

Alyona Kolomiitseva said:

reglob said:

Make Sieges mean something! Don't let a player raid, Fire Ball, etc. while under siege. Make them breakout first, or someone break them out. Make Sieges count.

Sieges were designed a long time ago, and many changes to their mechanics would be really complicated. So our devs are not planning to change them.

this is  the suggestions thread. moderator input is not needed.

Let's say anyone could do a BG with 100 archers and always win 101 archers, a single 1% per BG win. You do 10 BGs every day and by the end of the week you would then have 200 archers. Continue this 1% per day increase and after ten weeks you would have over 100,000 archers. Ten weeks later you'd have over 100 million and by the end of the year 400 million billion archers. Of course, no one could feed that many troops, but the point is that no game can work if the player always wins, even as little as 1%.

this game is the biggest taking the piss that i know, only alts and plarium team 

no need nerf the entire game, need remove alts at least

Sir Tiger The claw said:

the stormfall as I see it now and the way it was when I stated is two different.Are two separate games . I just hit my 90 day reward and I only got 10 dragons. Why should I log in very day for 90 days to get such a horseshit reward ? The rewards you give out now are not worth a shit. The game has turned into a game of money and strategy no longer has anything to do with it. I need you to give me one good reason to continue in this game. This game was interesting and fun when I started it. now I see no reason to continue. the rewards i once looked forward to are no longer there. I know that alot of players are no longer happy with this game. What will happen once you loose the majority of you members because you are being such tightwads. I will never spend another penny in your game

Unless it was a bug you were probably at the 60 day reward point. For me, the 90 day reward still shows 50 dragons.

60 Day Screenshot

90 Day Screenshot

Alyona Kolomiitseva said:

Our developers need to follow the plan and create new features which were planned to appear in the game.

I disagree. When the feel and flavour of the parts of the plan they have implemented so far is clearly alienating large numbers of players they should hold off on implementing more of it until they have taken some time to understand why their changes are unpopular. Perhaps if they took a week off developing and spent that week reading and understanding players views as expressed in the forums, they might find a way of addressing players concerns and improving player loyalty. 

SlopranoDark said:

Greetings m'lords and ladies!

Allow me to ask the question what do you think of Stormfall now and Stormfall in the past? What are changes you liked or disliked? What do you think that should change in Stormfall right now and what shouldn't have changed back in the days?

Post your opinions & feedback here and see what others think!

Maybe one update you disliked wasn't that bad after all? 

Some rules before we start:

• A friendly tone and positive feedback is important to keep it calm. Critique is fine, as long as it does not fall out of control! 
  
• Do not act rude to people whom have different opinions that yours! Discuss about it, in a nice way. 
  
• Build your opinion up with arguments, it's important to make a powerful statement! 
  
• The official forum & game rules apply here as well, don't forget that!
  
• The rules of civility might be a useful guideline for the above standing point too.

I'm looking forward onto your replies!

The game has always had a pay to win aspect to it, but it feels like the explosion of items, buffs/debuffs, etc have turned the game into a giant cash grab.

I think the dragon stone, hero, and fortress are nice additions.  However, I do not like how 2/3 of them seem to lock the better stuff behind a pay wall.  The fortress gives no bonus for your defenders.  The only real "advantage" defenders have is there is a limit on how much off can be sent to attack.  That helps leagues with enough coiners, since they can stack so much def there that even those who could downgrade it don't due to how much off it would cost.  The end result is most fortresses got rushed to one of the safe points and then sit undefended.  Heros seemed like a nice addition; do bgs, get gear for your hero and make your troops stronger.  However, the rare items almost always drop in a chest that needs a key to open.  That locks the most desirable equip items behind a pay wall...and to add insult to injury, that chest replaces the equipment item you should have gotten.  Its like a giant middle finger from the devs, not only do you have to pay to open the chest, but that chest also replaces the free item you should have gotten (at the very least meaning the theft of several moon coins).

The new items almost all are pay only.  The end result being an ever increasing amount of content locked behind a pay wall.  I have seen some show up as tournament rewards, but aside from league tournaments (where the coiner's efforts help the whole league get nicer rewards), most of those items are out of reach...or I should say, the amount of troops I'd lose to earn them far overshadows the benefit from the item.

The old Stormfall, tournaments were not so frequent.  They felt like real events.  There was actually time to get stuff built up so you could play in them and the rewards felt worthwhile.  Now, there is a never ending cycle of tournaments, most with rewards that have been massively nerfed compared to the old events.  Normal warlocks or normal demons as your reward choice instead of eldrich necros and eldrich golems.  To be honest, the never ending flood of tournaments has caused me to ignore them altogether.  When I earn rewards, its a result of my normal playing, not of making any real effort to participate.  

I also found the attempts to liven up tournaments fell flat.  The Capture the Flag was entirely dependent on being online at the right time.  It felt like a new beacon drop, except it involved hitting mostly empty fortresses instead of expanding territory.  The "heats" (special August events?) seem like just a way to encourage the tops to spend ever more money while leaving average players in the cold.  

The explosion of cash only stuff and all these packs (remember when you didn't get troops for buying sapphires?) seem to have created a new type of noob as well.  I've seen so many attacks where it looks for all the world like the guy just bought every pack available and threw it at someone.  Spies, defense, unsupported legendaries...guess that proves that wallet can't replace brains?  It probably shouldn't annoy me, but I find the constant bombardment of these offers and the idiocy of some players who obviously buy it all while understanding nothing gets on my nerves.  I guess Plarium doesn't want smart players; they prefer them rich and dumb.

Overall, while there are some nice things that have been added, I liked the gameplay in the old Stormfall better than the gameplay in the newer Stormfall.  It feels like the increasing amount of things locked behind a paywall is driving average players away from the game and is leaving behind giant networks of alts (that used to be real players) that now slave away to grant unfair advantage (such as huge out of league defense at player castle) to those who inherited the castles after the players quit.

securitas04 said:

Except that never losing is like always winning. If you lose 0%, then you can do BGs forever. You're also getting experience points, 100 of each resource, an item for your hero and BG points and possibly tourney points with every BG. The acid test for any idea is simple. If you played poker with someone and they got to use your idea against you, would you think they were cheaters?

To compare BG's to like raiding in WOW, you never end up succeed and end of the day you stuck with a repair bill.... Its not about never losing, its about never winning....

Just lost as follows in a lvl 16 battleground personal quest:

4 warlocks

1 Necromancer

1 Great Lord

1 Eldrich Knight

8 Imperial Knights

1 Knight

22 Pikemen

2 Imperial Paladines

17 paladines

The "spoils" were 

6 "Great Lords" and

 2 Archers pluss the "incredible reward" of those "invaluable" 

10 pikemen. 

In other words, I lost more than 3 times the units gained. And the units "gained" was not nearly is high levels as the ones lost. 

 Can someone explain to me how this is going to make people want to play these quests on those terms?

And can someone explain to me what the incentives should be in killing off 250 of other people's hard worked for units to "win" those "YUUGE" rewards of 5 zapphires?

What does 5 zapphires buy you?

An archer with spare change...

Great!

People would have to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars just to come near higher levels, unless you have years of your life to waste on online games when they can fight real wars in real lives. And for what? A few meagre zapphires and "rewards" that doesn't even remotely come near the losses suffered. 

And those "bonus" quests is nothing more than begging you to spend more money.

I would like a rational explanation for this if not a giant scheme to suck people's wallets dry with side order of aggrevation. 

SlopranoDark said:

Greetings m'lords and ladies!

Allow me to ask the question what do you think of Stormfall now and Stormfall in the past? What are changes you liked or disliked? What do you think that should change in Stormfall right now and what shouldn't have changed back in the days?

Post your opinions & feedback here and see what others think!

Maybe one update you disliked wasn't that bad after all? 

Some rules before we start:

• A friendly tone and positive feedback is important to keep it calm. Critique is fine, as long as it does not fall out of control! 
  
• Do not act rude to people whom have different opinions that yours! Discuss about it, in a nice way. 
  
• Build your opinion up with arguments, it's important to make a powerful statement! 
  
• The official forum & game rules apply here as well, don't forget that!
  
• The rules of civility might be a useful guideline for the above standing point too.

I'm looking forward onto your replies!

The old Stormfall felt much more balanced.  There has always been pay to win option, but as DJMOODY said, it took stupid money to buy wins.  Whales were pretty rare and while you could buy sapphires, the rates weren't that great and you didn't get any bonus troops or items with them.  There were still plenty of unfair things in the old Stormfall, but in any game that allows involuntary PvP, you're going to encounter that.

Initially, I didn't dislike when they added the packs to the game.  The cost was low enough for an impulse buy ($5-20 range), and what you got for that money (especially compared to old Stormfall costs) was really nice.  However, it didn't take long for Plarium to start ratcheting up the cost while not increasing the value of goods purchased proportionately.  Those "special" deals were initially pretty sweet too.  Spend $10 for 20k sapph and some troops is a really sweet deal.  But once you buy that once, you'll never see it again; instead, they'll try to charge you $20 and then $40 for the same number of sapphs and a handful of troops/items that do not make up the cost dif at all...yup, that deal is "special" alright... Whales became a bit more common, but the food "cap" kept armies from getting too crazy.

The removal of the food cap, introduction of all these $ only items, and the $ aspects of heros and fortresses feel like they have turned the new Stormfall into a biggest wallet wins game.  Strategy is overshadowed by credit card crusaders and wallet warriors...you can't really hurt them because they buy it all back and don't seem to care that Plarium ratchets the price up each time.  In a way, its taken away incentive to spend because I simply am not rich enough to compete.  It does not matter if I spend $0 or $500, the same players would still crush me easily.  It also has made the game feel much like you "have" to spend to even enjoy the game.  In a free to play game, that feeling is generally when you see average players leaving in droves.

One side effect of the new Stormfall that I find quite irksome is increase of bugs/glitches/lag in the game and support that generally asks for proof then does nothing about it at all.  Its like they make you jump through a bunch of hoops then just ignore you...maybe all the requests for proof are just hoping you'll give up?  

Plarium is also cheating players; some item descriptions are flat out lies.  The only thing that makes the increased cash grab feel of the game sting more is when you waste money on items to help achieve league goals (eg, buying weor so you can be a staging point for a league attack) only to discover the item does not work as described (it is a small thing, but weor clearly says you cannot have any offensive action launched against you while under the protection. That is a flat out lie, people can launch attacks, they just bounce off unless weor expires or is cancelled before attack gets there).

Overall, more cash intensive to compete, poor support, increase in bugs/glitches/lag...the new Stormfall just is not as much fun as old Stormfall was.  

Alyona Kolomiitseva said:

jumy said:

need you pay for others, particularly for alts that gain sapphires unfairly and stressed other for nothing

this is only one that ruin my gameplay (Merlin), see now

imagine how many others and i only put the evidence

You can always report Alts to our Support Team, Jumy.

Yes...we can report alts all day and all night and still nothing will be done.  I can understand to some extent.  It is very hard to prove a castle is an alt and not a friend/roommate/family member using same house and same computer.  I am certain there can be legal ramifications if a real player was wrongly banned as an alt.  That does not change the fact that a great many players are exploiting alts for unfair advantage in the game.  

securitas04 said:

Let's say anyone could do a BG with 100 archers and always win 101 archers, a single 1% per BG win. You do 10 BGs every day and by the end of the week you would then have 200 archers. Continue this 1% per day increase and after ten weeks you would have over 100,000 archers. Ten weeks later you'd have over 100 million and by the end of the year 400 million billion archers. Of course, no one could feed that many troops, but the point is that no game can work if the player always wins, even as little as 1%.