A New Monthly Pay-to-Play Server
New server: Pay Monthly
I started on the Dark Plains server last July. I saw my league-mates with millions of offense/defense, and I was awed. I was inexperienced, and careless with my armies. I couldn't beat anyone we were warring against. My castle was practically useless. I calculated how long it would take me to build a multi-millions strong army, and was very discouraged by the results of my math. I was on the verge of quitting the game, when the Untamed Lands were announced.
In October on the Untamed Lands, I started a new castle, eager to have a chance to finally be able to compete with the best players on the server. The talk in the server was all the same. Everyone was eager to get a strong foothold on the new server.
In my quest to be queen of the new server, I spent quite a bit of money on sapphires. I did get to the top, fielding a powerful army, leading the server in battlegrounds and castle level for some time. I was proud of my castle, my reputation, and my accomplishments -- but in a way I was ashamed that so much of my success was owed to the money I paid.
I have not paid any more money since the early months, having been discouraged by the high cost of staying competitive with the other coiners. I am now quite disillusioned by the pay-to-win model, and refuse to participate any more in it.
My suggestion is to create a separate server that has a low monthly payment, where there are NO sapphire purchase packs.
A lot of players would jump at the chance to play in an equal access environment where their activity and castle management skills are the only factors that set them apart. No longer would the deepest pockets yield the best castles.
With a modest sapphire income, it would create a much more robust, active and engaging environment. Leagues would be more active and fun to play for. Tournament wins would be more significant. Strategy would also be much more interesting. With a finite sapphire income, it will force us to be more careful how we spend them. Different tactical schools would emerge and begin to separate the sapphire-spending styles of each player.
I think there'd be a lot less burnout on that server. So many new players quit because they can't compete with the coiners. When you're new it's so easy to make a mistake (or be outplayed) and lose your whole army. It's extremely discouraging to spend weeks or even months retraining your losses, when a coiner than buy a few packs, revive their losses, and be stronger than ever in a minute.
The bottom line is, give us a server with a monthly payment, with no sapphire packs. I think a fair price is between $5 and 15 a month.
Here are my recommendations to handle the changes to the pay-to-play server. I'd love to have some discussion on this to work out a solid, realistic system.
Sapphires:
Replacing sapphire packs could be done any number of ways:
- Create a new building that produces sapphires (up to level 20, and 25 with sketches would be good I think)
- Daily sapphires, awarded on your first login of the day.
The Daily Loyalty Roll could award sapphires every day, starting at 800 at Day 1 and ramp up to 1500 per day at 90+ days.
These numbers could be anything, obviously. - A static allowance - everyone pays the same monthly fee, and gets the same monthly sapphires.
- A graduated pay structure. Say, the lowest available monthly payment could be $4 a month. Middle rates could be $8 and $12. The highest maybe $16 a month. And give different allocations of sapphires at each level.
So the difference would have to be relatively small, i.e. 500 sapphires a day for $4 and 1000 sapphires a day for $16.
- Every player should start with a cache of sapphires. Without it, no one would be able to start a league or buy a craftsman in the first week. I think 2.5k-10k would be good for day one. It has to be around 2k at least, for leagues.
What would be the best method for pay to play sapphire distribution?
Personally, I like the idea of a sapphire production building. But any fair method that gives consistent, equal access to sapphires for all players will be good.
Something that rewards regular activity would be fine, and in consistent spirit with the game. The daily loyalty roll already exists and would be easy to adjust to give sapphires.
**Training:
We should reduce training time for troops in the Sentry House.
In the game right now, people buy packs because training is too damn slow. So if I pay every month, and don't have access to packs, I should be able to build troops faster.
I think increasing training speed by 2x or 3x would help saturate peoples' castles faster.
Personally, I think the battlegrounds system would be significantly more playable if we could train troops 3x faster. It takes a pretty absurd amount of time to train enough troops to clear high level BGs, even pumping out from all 4 queues.
Also major losses from PVP would be easier to recover from with the combination of daily sapphires and a training speed increase.
I would strongly advocate for this change to training speed.
**Resources:
If training speed is increased, resource production should be re-scaled to accommodate the increased cost per day. With increased production, we could also increase the raid cap from 50k to 100k, increase the protection from catacombs, etc. Everything related to resources could just be scaled at the same rate of 2x or 3x.
**Training and Resources depends on the sapphire gains.
If sapphire gains are good enough, we wouldn't need to touch training time or resource production. We'd be able to invest the sapphires in speeding up our growth.
But personally, I'd like to see faster training times so we wouldn't have to rely 100% on sapphires to produce troops. The pace of training without sapphires is quite painfully slow.
Tournaments:
Adjust tournament winnings to reflect a more even distribution of sapphires among players.
This is what makes the pay2play server really interesting. Tournaments. This is where people would convert their daily sapphire incomes into gains and build their castles up in ways that are normally reserved for only the coiners.
In a level playing field where everyone has the same access to sapphires, competition for tournaments would be very healthy. It'd be quite difficult to win the tournaments, and the winners wouldn't simply be coiners - they'd be active, hard-working players who are truly the best players on the server. Winnings should reflect that.
Again, any number of solutions are possible:
- Simply increase the cap on wins to 25k for individuals, 5k for leagues. And adjust the lower amounts accordingly.
- Leave sapphire rewards the same, but for the top scores include more side rewards, like eldritch dragons, great western dragons, thieves, -50% boosts, longer construction boosters like the 8/12/24hour boosts, etc. etc.
I think the improved rewards could be earned through the tournament points rewards we already have. Like a very high score would give a great western dragon, and an impossibly high score could give 2, for example. Alternatively, the top 10~20 in the standings could receive "purchase pack" rewards.
Leagues:
Adjust how sapphires are spent for league objectives.
When upgrading things like beacons, we can choose to do it fast with sapphires. We should be able to drop small packets of sapphires, like the 10/15/20k packets of resources. Say, each player can pay for beacon upgrades in increments of 2.5k sapphires.
Security:
Account security might be a big deal. Any thoughts?
My main thought is I think there would have to be some serious measures taken to ensure that every player only has one castle. IP address limitations might be an easy way.
Another game I play has a system where you can login to multiple accounts on the same IP address, but you cannot interact. Cannot attack the same target within 24hrs, cannot sent aid to each other. Something like that might work nicely here.
I really want to see this happen. A lot of players are very competitive, and the level of competition on a server like this would be on a whole new level. No one would be able to leverage any significant advantages over any other player without putting in a lot of work. Some people would invest in their infrastructure, some would invest in troops, some would hoard sapphires for a rainy day... The tactical implications would be very exciting.
When the time comes, I'd be more than happy to participate in a beta test to help the Plarium developers work out the right amount of sapphires to issue for each castle, test the playing environment.
What other mechanics would be important to change in a server with a monthly fee?
What can we do to see this become a reality?
Can we issue a survey to Stormfall players, asking how interested they would be in a pay to play server?
