SUMMARY OF THREAD:

ISSUE ONE:

Why were beacon force limits brought into the game? What did the game look like before force limits and what did force limits fix.

I'll just talk to myself for now then if no one at Plarium is available.

By the end of 2018 the beacon map was empty. 

The concentration of massive offence on a small number of mega coiners accounts, meant that multi-billions could be thrown at beacons. You can buy infinite troops imediately from the black market and some people had.

The only rational response was not to be in beacons and the beacon map was empty. The Beacon massacre event was just the final nail in the coffin.

Force limits on beacons prevent a small number of player buying armies that are completely out of kilter with the game and running over all the beacons for minimal losses.

It's important to understand the siege mechanics. The more you overwhelm someone under siege mechanics the fewer and fewer losses you take and the more and more you kill. This is why its possible for an overpowered army to run around the map winning many many fights, not really being eroded by each fight and posses as much threat at the end as it did at the start.

With force limits those people can still attack beacons but they have to split their army into pieces/muliple sends. This means they can;t overwhelm for little losses. They must share substantial losses with the defenders. No more easy kills with unbalanced mega armies.

As a result of the introduction of force limits, the beacon map once again flourished.

ISSUE TWO:

Why is the beacon game so important to Stormfall? Can it survive without one?

The beacon game is largley the end game for long term Stormfall players. 

When you start the game you are focused on the immediate of building up your castles and your lost arts. Maybe you get into a bit of castle warfare, which is largely 1 on 1 (although multiple ppl can defend).

As you move to being a medium/long term player you start completing these objective and your attention turns to wider goals and objectives that can only be achieved in co-operation with other people. These objectives are much more difficult to achieve and open up another level of game play that can absorb and interest you into the medium and long term.

Largely in Stormfall that is the raising and holding beacons and looking to progress your leagues rank. This requires multi-person co-operation, a whole league. It's where the true MMO elements of the game come alive.

The beacon game largely drives the meta game. Nearly all the diplo, spying, meetings, allies, colalitions etc are driven by the beacon game. It's essential to driving the real richness of the MMO element of the game. This is where the rich tapestries of player interactions, huge server wars and more are written. Where the game comes alive from it's simple algo's that calculate raid and seige mechanics, or BG fights, to something that has a life, and write a unique story, of it's own.

Without the beacon game the game holds no content for the majority of people as they progress into the medium and long term and the game won't retain them. There are no wider goals to progress into and keep people interested.

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Only a CM can tell you if the above (issue 1 and 2) mirrors Plarium's reasons for bringing beacon force limits to Stormfall. One assumes it is, and they fully understood the issues the players brought to them at the back end of 2018.

I can tell you the above are the reasons the Stormfall players united and came to the forums en mass to ask for force limits in Stormfall. I know this because I was one of the players that organised the TS meetings for players from across the game to come together and discuss the problem and formulate a request to put to Plarium to fix things. I also drafted the forum posts to summarise the players ideas, that were then reviewed and approved by everyone.

At this point I'll stop for a week or so and encourage some feedback.

I don't think any of the above is contenious. I think it's reasonably self evident. But before we move on I think it's important we agree on the basics and the history. We won't reach consensus on the issues of today unless we have some agreed upon basic bulding blocks.

Meh, my leagues beacons are strong enough to stop a 7-8bil weor hammer.  I doubt most other leagues have that much def though, so we may start seeing crazy coiners running around smashing stuff again soon.  It should be interesting, although I'm afraid it might result in a lot of people leaving the game.  

The game is fine; however, there are way too many pluses to players not raiding beacons. I think the majority of the problems can be resolved with S2 + S3 being combined, it would create more activity and less stale playstyles. Very few beacon action takes place outside of server 1. Weor units are not a real problem - they are like SH units, incredible better than any vanilla units. Not too many players have over 10,000 harpies - and most players with that many do not want to toss them into a shredder just for PvP / chance for more DE.