djmoody said:

LOVE that we have the first truly new content for over a year.

LOVE that it is something that takes a community to achieve, after all this is MMO.

Absolutely HATE that it's be cheapened to a sapphire race. This kind of achievement should only be earned in game. Something a whole player base can work together on and be proud of their achievement. I was excited about it for a few mins but then the fun had gone. Defeat snapped from the jaws of victory :(

There is absolutely no need to monetize every aspect of the game, a comfortable living can be made of this game without the need to go uber cynical, leaving us feeling the game is just about exploitation.

Use your brains, find a balance.

If everything is going to be bought what content is actually left in game for us to play??

That is the downfall of this game ain't it? Here, have some cool stuff, but of course come with a price tag. But that means nothing now when it come to f2p games and such. Just look at games such as Warframe. However that example have a much higher, hmm, production value? and you can grind (awfull lot of grinding, but still) in stead of spend cash.

Problem with Stormfall is we never is given something to add to the "Grind perspective". It's, sacrifice more units, faster, and "we desire you to rev for sapphires" to rinse and repeat. It's a very few players that can afford that in the long run.

Grind for resources > build army > do tournaments (activites) > chance to earn sapphires. This aspect of the game is more or less non existant, due to the very slow build time of units. (oh god there he goes again, and yes I will keep bring this up over and over and over).

It doesn't help bring in what seems to be cool features to the game, when it comes with a hefty price tag to it. League fortress's will be for the bigger leagues, the small ones can't coimpete, but that is kind of okay, because as with most mmo's else, small guilds and such is locked out of certain activites that large ones can do, but with most other mmo's there is also pug's (public pick up groups) that at least give you a chance to take part in content. 

It's nice and cool of Plarium to bring in new features, it's not that cool when the heavy aspect of monetize.

I know you can't compare games on the fly and such but. Last night playing EVE-Online, my Corp went balls to the walls in a fight that lasted for a good hour. We had two options, total defeat or victory. We was locked in a stalemate with the other players we was fighting. In the end we did come out of it victorious with little loss's and our guys was having a blast on teamspeak. We succeed due to team effort and good communication. most mmo's is based on this as key to success. Good communication is Stormfall is hard if you don't rely on 3rd party tools, teamspeak,ventrillo, slack, IRC and so on. The worst thing is though, there is lack and sense of unity with your other league members and options of what you can do to achieve great things together. 

The risk vs reward is just not here :(  

Spend some sapphires, buy some hearts for your castle make you feel better..... uhm, no :/

Lord Oberon said:

* Force Limits: Maximum Private Attack - 250,000 Food; Max League Attack – 500,000 Food.

can you develop that point?

One question:

You says that if another league successfully attacks your Fortress whilst an upgrade is going on, the upgrade will fail. How about if there is knowledge upgrade going on when the fortress is successfully attacked ? Will the knowledge upgrade fail as well? 

Lord Oberon said:

* Force Limits: Maximum Private Attack - 250,000 Food; Max League Attack – 500,000 Food.

can you develop that point?

One question:

You says that if another league successfully attacks your Fortress whilst an upgrade is going on, the upgrade will fail. How about if there is knowledge upgrade going on when the fortress is successfully attacked ? Will the knowledge upgrade fail as well? 

Hi there,

Mehnslayer said:

mrfreezzzz said:

Lord Oberon said:

* Force Limits: Maximum Private Attack - 250,000 Food; Max League Attack – 500,000 Food.

can you develop that point?

What do you mean, 1 dragon = 4 food per hour, 500,000 / 4 = 125k dragons in a league attack

i was afraid of that. 

with no def bonus, it'd be a slaughter for the defense to sustain any heavy assault...

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. 

Now, to the questions: 

Can we get a sneak peak at how it looks at lvl 20? 

No, unfortunately. Your league will need to upgrade the fortress or to find a 20 level fortress on the map to see how it looks. 

So at what level will league members have an active Upgrade button?

Anyone with a permission from the League Marshal can upgrade the Fortress.

So the fortresses do not have any defense bonus themselves? 

No, they don't have defense bonuses. Use your units only to defend them.

Where do I go to see the strength of defense at the fortress?

The Garrisons tab shows all the Units stationed in your Fortress.

Once the fortress reaches milestone (5) or (8) and they stop there, it can't be downgraded, right?

Yes, that is correct. It's for you to decide what to do with the fortress and whether to keep your units there or not. But keep in mind that a fully upgraded fortress provides much more bigger bonuses than low level one. 

If any further concerns come up, please check the new Wiki article with a detailed explanation of how Fortresses work!  If this article does not have what you need, please inform me on this topic.

I am currently giving the article more in-depth information.

Lord Oberon said:

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. 

Don't think the majority of the players fail to understand that as a f2p game, there need to be some way of monetizing to fund the game. But at same time, such a game, need to have a proper "grind" aspect, so players that doesn't spend, or doesn't spend as much, can compensate with grind. With most mmo's, the more you grind the longer you stay logged into the game.The longer you stay logged into the game, the greater the chance of run into other more paying players and add to give them content.  

Grind in this game is basicaly, do your 10 raids a day, add more units to queue. Sacrifice units to the BG monster every month or so (deppending on what level they are). So we don't have any grinding really, we got waiting, and more waiting, and even a bit more waiting. Which is not good gameplay, and it doesn't encourage spending habits either. 

Way back when I used to play Conan and you could build a guild fortress/town. Your guild members had to active gather materials to make it happen, it was a joint effort to put it up and make it happen. It gave a goal for a guild to work towards to make happen, and the sense of achievement once it was done make the players feel good about what they completed. Things like this is what you really should look into make happen. Give us things to do together as a league. Goals to aim for and achievements to make happen, that doesn't have a heavy influence from sapphires.

In any case this topic is about Fortresses not about the free-to-play model. Fortresses is exactly the thing to do together as a league. 

Before Fortresses there were some minor leagues that didn't have their own Beacon. Now, there is a personal beacon for every league, even very small ones. 

Make it a challenge for your league to upgrade your Fortress to the maximum extent possible and to protect it form your enemies.  

SlopranoDark said:

If any further concerns come up, please check the new Wiki article with a detailed explanation of how Fortresses work!  If this article does not have what you need, please inform me on this topic.

I am currently giving the article more in-depth information.

Very good, Lord SLOPRANODARK. You can look through this thread and add the answers to the questions raised here to your article. 

I think Fortresses are a good addition. Better than good actually. And i think any reasonable person understands why the cash option is there. Plarium has to make money, this is a business after all. But i see room for some fine tuning.  For example, i would like to see extra milestone levels added. Perhaps at 12, and then at 16, or even just at 15 so the hard work a league puts into it is not utterly destroyed if they should suddenly find themselfs targeted. It would be a pretty heavy hit if a league almost at lvl 20, suddenly found themselfs back to lvl8. That would be reason for many to just rage quit. I think most of the negativity comes from the fact that people who cannot spend such fortunes in sapphires cannot see a way to contribute to the leveling of their fortress. Yes, you can gain tomes from league quests, but those are shared by all, coiners and non coiners alike. What is missing is a way for non coiners to turn resources into tomes, and that could be easily achieved, either by directly donating to the fortress just like any beacon, or by for example allowing the Altar of Mara to convert resources/amulets into tomes. That way each individual player could participate and feel they are getting somewhere. Those are simple things to implement, and hopefully they will get looked at by Plarium, if people are vocal about getting them in the game.

And finally, for those small leagues without beacons, perhaps it would be nice if the fortress actually worked just like a beacon on steroids, that it got attacked by Balur, and in turn received Dark Essence to distribute to its members. 

Lord Oberon said:

In any case this topic is about Fortresses not about the free-to-play model. Fortresses is exactly the thing to do together as a league. 

Before Fortresses there were some minor leagues that didn't have their own Beacon. Now, there is a personal beacon for every league, even very small ones. 

Make it a challenge for your league to upgrade your Fortress to the maximum extent possible and to protect it form your enemies.  

You say "their personal beacon" !!!! WITH NO DEFENSE BONUS !!!! A "bit" of imbalance there don't you say???

The Garrisons tab shows all the Units stationed in your Fortress.

Stop insulting our intelligence!!!!! 

Stop making excuses for fails in development and feature planning!!!

Do you expect us to go and manually calculate defense for each player???!!!!!! Do you think that we know the level of all the Lost arts for all members?!?!?!?

No, unfortunately. Your league will need to upgrade the fortress or to find a 20 level fortress on the map to see how it looks. 

I bet we got this answer cause PLARIUM designers have not designed it yet!!!

Another thing pointing that this game has very poor project planning team!

I will not talk now about things that do not work as they should.... hamlets...

IF I GOT A TEAM LIKE THAT IN MY COMPANY ..... I WOULD LET GO ALL OF THEM 

Determining defense at the fortress

Leagues typically use the number of defense points per player at beacons to determine members rank, or how to apportion dark energy; it indicates who is contributing, and whether your strategic buildings are adequately secured. 

Because the fortress is a strategic building (our own personal beacons, as you say), it must be possible to evaluate its defense, and members contributions to that defense at a glance as you would for a beacon.  

Ideally this information should be displayed along side the defense for the beacons (Players total defense, Beacon defense, fortress defense, total contributed defense).

The garrison view is not a practical alternative.  (Frankly, this is precisely why it is possible to see defense points per player for beacons at the embassy).

This is a serious flaw, and it needs to be addressed urgently.

zapelo said:

Lord Oberon said:

In any case this topic is about Fortresses not about the free-to-play model. Fortresses is exactly the thing to do together as a league. 

Before Fortresses there were some minor leagues that didn't have their own Beacon. Now, there is a personal beacon for every league, even very small ones. 

Make it a challenge for your league to upgrade your Fortress to the maximum extent possible and to protect it form your enemies.  

You say "their personal beacon" !!!! WITH NO DEFENSE BONUS !!!! A "bit" of imbalance there don't you say???

The Garrisons tab shows all the Units stationed in your Fortress.

Stop insulting our intelligence!!!!! 

Stop making excuses for fails in development and feature planning!!!

Do you expect us to go and manually calculate defense for each player???!!!!!! Do you think that we know the level of all the Lost arts for all members?!?!?!?

No, unfortunately. Your league will need to upgrade the fortress or to find a 20 level fortress on the map to see how it looks. 

I bet we got this answer cause PLARIUM designers have not designed it yet!!!

Another thing pointing that this game has very poor project planning team!

I will not talk now about things that do not work as they should.... hamlets...

IF I GOT A TEAM LIKE THAT IN MY COMPANY ..... I WOULD LET GO ALL OF THEM 

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. 

At the same time, we are not saying there is no room for improvement here. Any constructive criticism is welcome. We agree that determining defense at the fortress is crucial. We are trying to come up with a solution for that as we speak. 

Lord Oberon said:

In any case this topic is about Fortresses not about the free-to-play model. Fortresses is exactly the thing to do together as a league. 

Before Fortresses there were some minor leagues that didn't have their own Beacon. Now, there is a personal beacon for every league, even very small ones. 

Make it a challenge for your league to upgrade your Fortress to the maximum extent possible and to protect it form your enemies.  

With no DEF bonus on a fortress as you got on a becon, there will be no incentive for a smaller league to want to protect their fortress. DEF units with no DEF bonus, have horrible odds vs OFF units. Either give Fortress's a buff that give def units a 50-100% DEF increase, or make an "upgrade" possible on the fortress that will make such a buff happen on a tiercide principle or something.

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! 

Hey,

Thank you,

Marshal Hobbes KT-S2

Fortresses have an inherit defense, although its not a straight up defense bonus,