Okay, I don't feel like start pick things apart and state what is good and what is bad. I will just give give an general opinion of and impression of how I see and feel things. 

I started play July/August or so last year. Around that time there was a lot of people complaining about BG changes and how pay outs had changed and made it harder. As I hadn't really experienced how it was, I couldn't really say much about it. Once I started play this game I realized its a very p2w focused game. Initialy that wasn't that bad, because I played games before that was p2p, p2w and so on, but those games had a grind aspect to them too. I could get away with spend less, but compensate with time and effort spent. Stormfall doesn't really offer any such grind aspect, things takes time, lots of time, lots of waiting..

More things and items get added to the game at a sapphire cost, but the ability to earn sapphires through game activties haven't increased at same phase (even at all?). It get less and less satisfying to play a game that keep dig further and further into your wallet. Then we got the units doesn't need food for upkeep that basicaly gave a giant gift basket to rich players to boost their armies at ridicilous rate. I know its not the norm, but a game such as this doesn't require all that many whales before things start get unplesant.

This game doesn't cater to the average joe that might have 20-30 USD a month to spend on it, but the guys that might spend 200-300 USD or more. The last straw that broke the camels back is these sketches..... upgrade my market 1 level, 4500 sapphires... Do you think this is a reasonable cost in terms of what you get back for your money when you compare to other games and entertainment out there? Also consdier all the other buildings you can upgrade and their levels. 

The new dragon kinda neat, but have to activate it every 3 hours a pain. Also if the bonus from the obelisk been nerfed to make up for the bonus you can get from the dragon, then thats bad as well. Players spent ages on upgrade their obelisk after all.

No one is asking for the game to be totaly free or everything for free. Doesn't matter how good a game can be if its not reasonable or affordable for the average player to take part in it. Yeah, you can play as a free to play, player, but most players got a competive instinct too, and when the "cash hurdles" get to high players prone to find something else to do. And when you then see Plarium state that "this game isn't for everyone" its like a slap in the face. Why not make it a game that is more or less for everyone with the aim of get everyone to spend something rather than a few a lot. 

There is mmo's and online games out there that succeed rather nice without the heavy focus on p2w items, but buy more into a players vanity with cool items that doesn't affect the sandbox but give them a bling factor. xp boosters, time saving boosters and such is all fine too, because those that want to grind can do so to compensate, those that have less time to grind they spend on boosters. 

A lot of time we get to hear, we get changes that been asked by players based on popular demands, but we never see where they come from, where they been posted about and such . The recent changes with the sketches just lead to more players in my league start talk about find some other game to play, which is bad because over time in games such as this, its not the game that keep you hanging around, its the other players you meet in the game, friends you made and so on. 

There need to be a symbosis between players and creators, Both need each other. Take care of your customers and the customers take care of you. People that feel they get taken adventage of and fleeced doesn't invoke much customer loyality. 

My lord Gadheras,

You made an amazing start on the topic here, not just because it's long text, also because it has a meaning that is very important for everyone. I'm glad you didn't leave the game yet, I'm striving to get those things resolved, striving to get the customers and the creators more like a team.

It will be a difficult task for me, hence I ask for your, and not just you alone but all the player's assistance. Alongside with the moderation, CM, administrator and development team. I think this definitely needs a positive twist. I've heard a lot of people complain about the changes, which is the biggest reason why I made this topic. I wanted to show Plarium how the customers feel, and give the possibility for them to reply on it as it's really important to have at least a connection between them.

I also thought of making a Representative Team. This team will be chosen players by votes from other players. Moderators, CM's and Administrators should not be allowed to vote on their desired candidates, because that will basically be the same idea as Moderators then. This team should be in direct contact with the Moderators or CM's. The purpose of this team is speaking for all the players, just like how it goes in the real world, at least in the Netherlands where I live. The Representative Team should be good listeners, and should check the forums and regular chats frequently to see if people desire something. Once they actually found something players desire, they should refer it to Moderators/CM's and those should pass it around and see what the CM's think of it. The Representative Team should obviously attempt to persuade the CM's for their desired idea!

But I wasn't sure if it'd work on here. Anyhow, it's worth and try and thus I'll put up a thread in the Suggestions topic and see what everyone thinks of that. I'll also pass the above standing idea to the CM's and see what they think of it!

Thumbs up for you, Gadheras! 

since the game I realized some things, plarium blinded by money

there is the potential to refine and improve but do not know what you do, all new "Dragon stone" was a nice evolution for obelisk where you need to grow in order to have but if ye try change it make a new trouble

New obligated tree  and how are given the quests depicts how ye see this game (for free) in a strategical game !! ye added 200 things 190 useless and unusable, you can use 6 but only for 3  forced hours and when sblock slot, need only time and not grown

New upgrade buildings: in black market found all solutions for buy resources, buildings are my castle and i not pay for them, i also paid for craftsmen and now to exploit need other pay?

ye have other good solutions to improved +%.... in black market found good solutions for this

Paragon status: i pay for use but need pay more for use what i earn, my benefits?

Eagle nets: 

what is the point? give meaning or ye wait for my boost and pay again? a small idea on the fly, in 70mi increase speed of my troops x10 (not the best solution but better than nothing)

Trainning units: 

these useless buildings .... upgrade them for bonus? not for pay eh, need proportionally to the growth for all, lv 81? in black market/bank found good solutions for buy troops

now go to upgrade my new lost art Dominion: for what?

ah no lol need paragon status for gain benefits -.-

I hope you get the idea of what i mean, looks in 2 minutes how many "improvements" could do without making us feel idiots, these are "improvements and evolving" the game and not only all for pay, if pay i can buy all (already existing all) also plarium (totally wrong direction)

The only compliment that i would make is to the artists is about the arts style, does much to dream than the game 

but anyway always all a good work

bgs changing: other points for dimostration, when ppl take feelling need a change or have poor lose for plarium (bad directions), if rewards with troops i use them..... triggers the mechanism for a good game and involved to spend

0. The game often becomes so slow, it is not enjoyable. After a while, it freezes. Please please please fix this!.

.

.

.

.

x. Sanctum Shard: do we really need to combine all Crystals by hand??? Nothing can be choosen, it is boring.

x+1. Dragon Stone: game is silly. Can't influence it, or can I? It duplicates many Skull functions. Not so interesting to collect Skulls anymore.

x+2. It would be great to see activity of other players, troop transports etc. It would be even greater if troops can be attacked/ambushed while in transit!

Nothings changed, apart from when I started out I thought that this was a game that non-payers might enjoy. I now know that non-payers can't compete on any level. 

I'm not even sure what I'm doing here. Should I wait another 19+days to get an extra 10 gold from that townhouse. Whats the point when the coiners already have bought all the bonus levels?

Or perhaps I can continue to complete the lost arts? I've been logging on for over a year and it'll still take me another 6 months to complete all the lost arts, but why bother, I can never win a battle, unless I take the time in building an army over 4Months that can be purchased in two minutes by somebody thats willing to spend.

I do partake with the dragon stone activities, although I'm sure that the coiners have already completed all the dragon arts already. 

Basically, what I'm saying is if you don't spend loads of cash, then its not really worth it. 

Sorry for not being more constructive, but I think I'm done with Stormfall. 

-- snip --

I also thought of making a Representative Team. This team will be chosen players by votes from other players. Moderators, CM's and Administrators should not be allowed to vote on their desired candidates, because that will basically be the same idea as Moderators then. This team should be in direct contact with the Moderators or CM's. The purpose of this team is speaking for all the players, just like how it goes in the real world, at least in the Netherlands where I live. The Representative Team should be good listeners, and should check the forums and regular chats frequently to see if people desire something. Once they actually found something players desire, they should refer it to Moderators/CM's and those should pass it around and see what the CM's think of it. The Representative Team should obviously attempt to persuade the CM's for their desired idea!

-- snip --

the game has become ridiculous with 3 hours dragon stone and sketches

Lady Nerium KT-S2 said:

This would be a good idea, if I thought it would work. There are a number of changes people have practically begged for that have been ignored in favor of adding more opportunities to spend money. I don't mind spending a reasonable amount to speed up certain game actions, but having things changed to the point you can't compete unless you wear your wallet out is a big turn off for me. Being ignored when you ask for a reasonable change in how something works to make the game more player friendly is adding insult to wallet-injury. Not a good idea if Plarium wants to retain customers.

Greetings.

I am sorry to hear that you feel this way about our game updates.

I understand that there are some updates which our players ask for months and you may feel really upset when they're not added. 

When we receive a suggestion from our players, we always consider it. Some of the suggestions require additional discussion and details, some of them are rejected, and some of them are passed to our developers.

But at this point it's just the beginning.

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

It takes time to review and consider the ideas suggested by our players. It takes time and efforts to develop and implement them. Please remember that there are always some tasks with high priority which were planned much earlier. 

Also, each feature needs to be balanced with others. Several departments work on each one of them.

I understand how you're willing to see new improvements suggested by our Community, and so do I.

But we all need to be patient and wait for them being implemented. Sometimes it takes months to develop a simple feature, but accepted ideas have high chances to appear in the game. Sometimes they are modified, and they differ from the original idea, but we try to make our players happy with them.

Of course, there will always be those who don't like a certain feature. But you always have a choice in this game. If you don't like something, you can just choose another activity and keep having fun with other features.

@ ALYONA

I assume all changes to the game get pushed to all the Plarium games in one for or the other. So changes we ask for that wouldn't necessary be good in Pirates, Sparta and so on get auto rejected? Correct?

If so, wouldn't it be better to have each game go their own direction with own changes?

@ ALYONA

I assume all changes to the game get pushed to all the Plarium games in one for or the other. So changes we ask for that wouldn't necessary be good in Pirates, Sparta and so on get auto rejected? Correct?

If so, wouldn't it be better to have each game go their own direction with own changes?

Mehnslayer said:

Gadheras said:

@ ALYONA

I assume all changes to the game get pushed to all the Plarium games in one for or the other. So changes we ask for that wouldn't necessary be good in Pirates, Sparta and so on get auto rejected? Correct?

If so, wouldn't it be better to have each game go their own direction with own changes?

For the most part updates go across all games, some updates just take longer for example SP had sketches a long time ago

I guess the suggestions and things that would be perfect for like Stormfall but doesn't necessary would work good for the other games get more or less auto rejected then.

Why not just have dev cycles on each game and give each game and their players what they deserve. :/

All forums under "English" have the exact same problem when it comes to feedback, no game seems to get any updates they want as Plarium's developers most likely are controlled by the marketing team....If we are to look at the game 3 years ago, and all others for that matter... Everyone was more or less happy to share / like / comment / suggest updates.... Now pretty much all English forums give Plarium hate and say they will stop spending money.

Plarium's community staff unfortunately need to pass off that bad feedback/hate and accept it because they can't do anything about it, the way it has been worded to me is its almost likely a war between the community staff and the marketing team, a "battle" if you will. 

I still enjoy the game a great deal, but with that said Plarium keeps changing the core mechanics and every day they are losing money and players....Regardless of what happened, with the BG issues recently, it does not matter to the community what the problem was, but Plarium has almost lost credibility to a lot of people, including big coiners.

Plarium is going down EA's route, but EA has a lot more room to "wiggle", EA can try to squeeze money from there customers, There has been several other companies try to do this in this genre and have gone completely bankrupt due to it... Go google Dragons of Atlantis boycott (Kabam) for risk of being banned I will not link an article or quote anything however I am sure you can find it pretty easily. I am not suggesting that a boycott will happen nor am I saying that I will promote it, HOWEVER this genre has been through this situation before where the customers felt cheated and ripped off by the system for promoting power gains to a ridiculous level. 

@ MEHNSLAYER

If I buy a game from EA, Ubisoft etc, I know what I walk into though. DLC's, expansions etc. But a good chance there is a core game at bottom that is worth playing still. If you look at games such as star wars online. When they went free to play, you could play through the entire core game as a f2p player (and thats a WHOLE lot of hours of entertainment for free)

It was when you wanted to get more into raiding and pvp that you had to start spend some cash. If you subbed for like a month you could also become a prefered player and benefit greatly above pure f2p. And most of what you spent on, would be unlocks that would stay with you once unlocked. (those that subbed had no need to spend on unlocks though).

Also, the base game itself would be way, way, way more polished than Stormfall ever will be.

The only other browser based game I paid for ever was one of the later rounds of Planetarium I played back in 2003 something. And then you just paid to take part in the round, which typical lasted like 3-4 months. By then one alliance or the other had basicaly wiped out anything else and there was no point in carry on, so reboot for next round. It was tick based, so things only happend every hour, but damn it was fun. Set your alarm clock early morning to send your attacks out. Sitting on IRC co-ordinate defences and so on.

*****

The dragon stone is a good start to turn based Pvp, but i'd like to see a grid lay out battle field and let us pit our offense against a castle and its defenders kind of like a game of chess. I'd like to see players be able to go head to head in a battle of tactics. in this way, and smart player could overcome a larger offense, or larger defense by careful use of troops and moves.

Mehnslayer said:

Iron your suggestion for turn based combat won't happen, the game engine they use won't support it, they would need to upgrade and that would most likely cause more problems then it is worth

Stormfall use more CPU on my comp than GTA5 does. Quite silly though.Turn based PVP would never happend, but to have what I would consider a proper game client would been awesome.

Although, turn based PVE maybe board like as with Heroes of Might and Magic, could been cool, but I can't see that happen with flash, and the game have no where near the dev focus something like that would require.

With regards to actual gameplay ......... big changes are:

When they made sapphire spending x9 cheaper (the permanent offers and 75% healer), giant hammers got bought. There are a few league with 200m+ and one with approx 500m. There has been an explosion of coining. Now the strength of a league is down how much their 3/4 major coiners are willing to coin.

This really changes beacon take downs as there is a level of defense now where a beacon can be hammered with no softeners. It changes them even when you do soften as the loss ratio on the hammer strike is very favorable so a 50m beacon can now be taken down with 50m off loss - before it would have taken considerably more than 50m.

You have to be very carefully putting defence on settlements or hamlets given how much bigger the offences are than the defences now.

On the defensive side the plethora of quests, especially league quests where very little activity is required have filled leagues with Eldricth golems. There are now many leagues with enough Def to try and defend a beacon, leagues that aren't active enough to actually build the defense as would have been required in the past. Makes beacons more competitive not just from the usual suspects. It's not unheard of for a league to come from nowhere and be able to stick 80-100m on a beacon. That didn't happen in the past.

Boosts have also changed beacons. It's possible to have defence in a beacon soon after it's hit, sent as reinforcements with no risk. Before you would have had to send as an attack and run the risk your strike didn't win the fight your defence would die also. Now you can be in in a couple of minutes in complete safety. Coupled with the increase in coining/big players beacons can be shut down with large defence very quickly now.

Castle moves and bubbles that render you invulnerable also take the skill out of beacon take downs and remove the ability to FB or catch offence as it is pulled together  - that is a sad loss of an element of strategy and removed the only legitimate use of FB's.

For raiding there is no need to pre-load now - anyone with money can raid for 100k by spending money on the market place. Again coining destroying the advantage of knowledge skills and experience. Not particularly good.

It's possible to create a castle than can build 24/7 troops without ever doing a raid by upgrading townhouses and mines with sketches. Benefits Plariums wallet but can't be good for the game. No need to do any work for troops if you have enough money.

Shop only off and def boosts arrived. Not cool. And with dragon arts / fortresses and new items it is getting more an more difficult to interpret a strength test hit. Given very few ppl have mastered that art, it's again disappointing that the value of knowledge skill and experience is being degraded at the alter of coin.

All in all the game is way more "dangerous now" (due to the number uber large players that no1 else can complete with). The thing that irks the most is that the game is slowly being eroded as a strategy game as skill, knowledge and experience is getting more and more easy to over come with money.

You already put down my mind, but I wanr to verify.

It's no longer a game, it's a shop. In the last months, there were a lot of useless, unnecessary items / features added to the black market / game. Some of them destroy the warfare. It would give more fun to the players if they would fix bugs and increase the performance. 30 seconds to take the reward for 1 daily mission is morbid.

Hamlets are pretty useless compared to the old pits and so. There are three major points.

- the increased distance. You are not able to hit them, even using boosters (which you have to buy).

- collecting resources. You can only collect with an amount of troops which are dedicated target during pvp. A lot of players will revive their units (only available for sapphs)

- no longer possible to take out someone's offense because they return automatically. Deff units do not  count during attack

So the winner is Plarium.

The cost of sapphs are totally unbalanced across the countries (depends on the home country of Plarium).

Dragon arts are nice but pretty useless because they are only active for 3 hours.

Plarium has to increase actions to prevent cheating / hacking.

Sketches and tokens should be available through quests.

Other so called f2p offer the possibility to buy a lot of the items (which are only available for a fee) with earned res.

Some months ago I provable lost some sapphs because of a bug, but the support says there is no bug. They always say there is no bug, so they dont have to compensate.

Someone wrote that Plarium is blinded by the money. THAT'S TRUE.

BUT as long as there are many people spending money, they won't stop. The medium of the players to demand something from the developer is to stop spending money.

Plarium removed several items from the wheel of fortune. ALL items that are only available for sapphs should be available in the wheel of fortune.

BG's. I needed a lot of time to understand the old bg system. But I didnt come to terms with the new one. So what about new players while experienced players still have problems with the system?

etc.

hoschi1177 said:

You already put down my mind, but I wanr to verify.

It's no longer a game, it's a shop. In the last months, there were a lot of useless, unnecessary items / features added to the black market / game. Some of them destroy the warfare. It would give more fun to the players if they would fix bugs and increase the performance. 30 seconds to take the reward for 1 daily mission is morbid.

Hamlets are pretty useless compared to the old pits and so. There are three major points.

- the increased distance. You are not able to hit them, even using boosters (which you have to buy).

- collecting resources. You can only collect with an amount of troops which are dedicated target during pvp. A lot of players will revive their units (only available for sapphs)

- no longer possible to take out someone's offense because they return automatically. Deff units do not  count during attack

So the winner is Plarium.

The cost of sapphs are totally unbalanced across the countries (depends on the home country of Plarium).

Dragon arts are nice but pretty useless because they are only active for 3 hours.

Plarium has to increase actions to prevent cheating / hacking.

Sketches and tokens should be available through quests.

Other so called f2p offer the possibility to buy a lot of the items (which are only available for a fee) with earned res.

Some months ago I provable lost some sapphs because of a bug, but the support says there is no bug. They always say there is no bug, so they dont have to compensate.

Someone wrote that Plarium is blinded by the money. THAT'S TRUE.

BUT as long as there are many people spending money, they won't stop. The medium of the players to demand something from the developer is to stop spending money.

Plarium removed several items from the wheel of fortune. ALL items that are only available for sapphs should be available in the wheel of fortune.

BG's. I needed a lot of time to understand the old bg system. But I didnt come to terms with the new one. So what about new players while experienced players still have problems with the system?

etc.

Thank you for the feedback.

But please, give it a chance. Some of the new game features may differ from what you're used to, but they are designed to diversify the gameplay, and make our game more interesting and exciting.

Alyona Kolomiitseva said:

But please, give it a chance. Some of the new game features may differ from what you're used to, but they are designed to diversify the gameplay, and make our game more interesting and exciting.

I'm sure that you will like most of them if you can adapt your strategy.

It wouldn't been so bad if the cost wasn't so excessive. For the simplest comparsion, go to steam, then just browse the featured list of games, then just start compare price of what you can get for your moneys worth. Just take Age of Wonders III that probably the closest you get to Stormfall in setting as example. 

New game features mean little if we the players can't really afford to explore them much. This game take a long time to play, thus it would made far more sense to keep us have to invest less but more over time.  It's really pointless to discuss, but Plarium got over priced games, and that is the bottom line of things.