there is no secret this is a "pay to win" game. the f2p is in reality just "free to try". The rewards you get for your grind/effort does in no way measure up to coiners.

I'm quite sure that back in the day when this game launched, and bots was less of a issue, players didn't have this mentality of "oh I need bot castles to raid/farm, or lese the game is pointless". The whole deal around bot castles and gameplay is a player mentality, a bad one!

Bots/resource farms, is not hackers, it's just run by typical "gold sellers" who is enabled by the business model fo Plarium to do what they do. They offer cheap resources, scrolls, even armies that will have an inpact on the rankings. 

You can see a interesting interview here regarding gold sellers @ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWvHcoqru7I

It a few years old, but its still very valid.

The whole hacking scare is for most parts that, a scare. In the past with games such as WOW; you could hire "farmers" to level up your accounts, giving out your account details, which by all means, just really retarded, of course bad things happen. The bots in Stormfall, is based around selling of resources and services. They want to make a revenue just like Plarium, they have no interest in get a bad reputation as it would hurt their sales. As long as Plarium doesn't want to deal seriously with the issue, and the gold sellers offer better deals than Plarium does.

Plarium is the enabler in all this and we the players stuck with the mess, and it does affect the state of gameplay.  When players start cry about minor changes to the bots and how it affect them negative because they can't raid and farm the bots as good as before? That just a fk'ed up state of mentality. This game was not designed for players to abuse bots to get ahead. 

@ Plarium - Remove all the obvious bots already, there is no secret where they are and who they are. Let the players play the game as it was supposed to. For once, put on your manpants and sack up!  

djmoody said:

The raiding event is completely ruined (one of the only pure things left in the game that cant simply be bought).

There is nothing in this game which cannot be bought - we can buy extra raids for the raiding event

Want to start a new week with 20 or more raids available on day one? Just use instant recalls after midnight reset

so, is this another part of the game that my assumptions are wrong then?  the bot lines i assumed were placed by plarium as a supplemental supply.  from what i see the bot lines don't sell their resources.  how would they do so?  they would have to sell to real players and be handicapped by the 50k a week limit.  who would these real players be?  coiners? would they bother to be inconvenienced by using gold farmers?  or non coiners?  don't think so.  sudo coiners?  if so then they might as well become real coiners.  other games i have played have had serious gold farmers.  i don't see how it would work in this game.

alts by real players:  how many top players have alts?  at least 1 per league family they belong to.  such as cool 1, cool2, cool 3 and cool 4.  along with their allies.  such as way cool 1,2,3 and 4.  plus their spies in non ally leagues.   if a player had 70 alts, each sending 50k per week to their main, that would equal a player like me raiding 10 bot line castles per day.

i am a pve non coiner who utilizes 4 different bot lines. if they are removed then i have no game at all in this game.  i will not spend more time on the game.  matter of fact i will continue to spend less time on the game.  i will certainly not spend more time on the game in order to fight more players for active or inactive castles either one.

if the bot lines are players then how could plarium not turn their castles into teleport spots?  and would they do the same to big players with at least 3 alts that they also coin on?

with coiners already having their mtx, non coiners being non coiners, the lack of even more bot lines and the level 2 castles being so prevalent,  i just don't see the gold farmers in this game like i have in other games.

johanrayne said:

so, is this another part of the game that my assumptions are wrong then?  the bot lines i assumed were placed by plarium as a supplemental supply.  from what i see the bot lines don't sell their resources.  how would they do so?  they would have to sell to real players and be handicapped by the 50k a week limit.  who would these real players be?  coiners? would they bother to be inconvenienced by using gold farmers?  or non coiners?  don't think so.  sudo coiners?  if so then they might as well become real coiners.  other games i have played have had serious gold farmers.  i don't see how it would work in this game.

alts by real players:  how many top players have alts?  at least 1 per league family they belong to.  such as cool 1, cool2, cool 3 and cool 4.  along with their allies.  such as way cool 1,2,3 and 4.  plus their spies in non ally leagues.   if a player had 70 alts, each sending 50k per week to their main, that would equal a player like me raiding 10 bot line castles per day.

i am a pve non coiner who utilizes 4 different bot lines. if they are removed then i have no game at all in this game.  i will not spend more time on the game.  matter of fact i will continue to spend less time on the game.  i will certainly not spend more time on the game in order to fight more players for active or inactive castles either one.

if the bot lines are players then how could plarium not turn their castles into teleport spots?  and would they do the same to big players with at least 3 alts that they also coin on?

with coiners already having their mtx, non coiners being non coiners, the lack of even more bot lines and the level 2 castles being so prevalent,  i just don't see the gold farmers in this game like i have in other games.

 edit:  i just read posts in another thread, i still don't see it.  a bot castle could not make top rankings just by gathering their own resources.  they have to be able to copy and paste to make rankings, especially if they have been inactive for any period of time.  i have played for over a year with 172m in raids and i couldn't make high scores even with my entire army destroyed.  if they were lvl 61 castles then they would still be in highest tier right?  i think the issue with the rankings is copy and paste.  i thought this was going on in the russian lines for about 3 weeks and then stopped.

If you control many, MANY bots, its not a big deal to send a certain amount of resources to someone. They spam mail,  forums, etc, with their deals. They given chaper offers for resources than what Plarium sells for in the market. 

Gadheras said:

If you control many, MANY bots, its not a big deal to send a certain amount of resources to someone. They spam mail,  forums, etc, with their deals. They given chaper offers for resources than what Plarium sells for in the market. 

The sad thing is Plarium turned bots into game content and reluctant to deal with the problem.

but what i don't get is players willing to buy from them, it can't be that secure for real life information given out. and non coin players won't be buying.  it doesn't seem that there would be enough customers to go around. plus the 50k limit per week it would still be a pain to get a significant amount of resources to players.  i don't see a huge plus either way.

from what i have seen on the lines, there are always plenty of resources in the castles even with heavy competition from other players.  so are they just printing there own amounts of resources, separate and apart from what the fiefs say the growth amount is and what the resource caps say they are?  such as 51k/51k/51k. and 150 per hr.

the bots that got ranked must have printed there own troops rather than build them over time.  the russian lines for 3 weeks had between 2k and 3k archers on them with like 10 knights 5 golems/ griffins and at the top of the pyramid was like 20 wyverns or 10 dragons.  they were refilling each day.  this was like 9 months ago.

johanrayne said:

Gadheras said:

If you control many, MANY bots, its not a big deal to send a certain amount of resources to someone. They spam mail,  forums, etc, with their deals. They given chaper offers for resources than what Plarium sells for in the market. 

The sad thing is Plarium turned bots into game content and reluctant to deal with the problem.

but what i don't get is players willing to buy from them, it can't be that secure for real life information given out. and non coin players won't be buying.  it doesn't seem that there would be enough customers to go around. plus the 50k limit per week it would still be a pain to get a significant amount of resources to players.  i don't see a huge plus either way.

from what i have seen on the lines, there are always plenty of resources in the castles even with heavy competition from other players.  so are they just printing there own amounts of resources, separate and apart from what the fiefs say the growth amount is and what the resource caps say they are?  such as 51k/51k/51k. and 150 per hr.

the bots that got ranked must have printed there own troops rather than build them over time.  the russian lines for 3 weeks had between 2k and 3k archers on them with like 10 knights 5 golems/ griffins and at the top of the pyramid was like 20 wyverns or 10 dragons.  they were refilling each day.  this was like 9 months ago.

The 50k limit a week applies from one player to another. If you got a bot farm that 100s of castles. You can keep ship plenty of resources every day to someone. If players wouldn't buy cheap resources and scrolls etc from these, then they wouldn't been there in the first place. They only there because someone profit from it. They are many times cheaper than what Plarium is on their resource packs, and it seems like they still find it worthwhile to do this. If Plarium had dropped their prices on resource packs to a level the farmers doesn't find worth the while anylonger, problem would be solved. But Plarium not prone to do that, neither deal with the issue else. Players been reporting these bots for like forever, there is no secret for Plarium what is going on. 

Even the bots get raided by players. the bots safes resources in the catacombs, they can use for the trades. 

Gadheras said:

If Plarium worried about remove the bots will remove content for the players, they really need to ask themselfs if the game is lacking in content to keep the players happy and fix it.

this i totally agree with.

Plarium put bots in game for everyone to raid for resources. If you ever played other web browser MMOs they have ways for players to collect resources without raiding others base. Just a way for plarium to sell sketches. This also could be short term for maybe a Raid Event.

cat in the hat said:

Plarium put bots in game for everyone to raid for resources. If you ever played other web browser MMOs they have ways for players to collect resources without raiding others base. Just a way for plarium to sell sketches. This also could be short term for maybe a Raid Event.

Plarium didn't put any Castles to the map. The only exception  - our test Castles with test Leagues (called Plarium). They are used by our QA to test new game features on servers. Some things can be checked on test servers, but some require confirmation on public servers.

Bot Castles were created by other players, not Plarium. 

I'm confused, so:

every castle on the map is supposed to be one that has been set up by a real person?

There are not supposed to be any castles just collecting resources and storing them?

What the hell are you calling a "bot"? is it the same as an "alt" (which is I think a 2nd account, normally used in MMO's to support a main account)

apparently inactive accounts are deleted.....

so, all the castles around me are all held by real, active, players? I want to play a game for several hours a day, without having to wait half an hour to hit a target, and half an hour for troops to get back, thus I am limited to hitting those close to me.

If there are no "robot" castles, that means as an active player (several hours a day) I will end up kicking the same few targets, every day,  that is a textbook definition of  BULLYING.

I've played Clash of Clans for 3 years because you never run into somebody twice, cos that engenders really bad feelings. 

I'm already (after 4wks) getting hacked off because I cant hold a hamlet without it being attacked within 5 minutes, in fact my troops cant reach the hamlet that fast....

Battling heavy coiners is bad enough, beginning to realise why the millions of accounts are no longer active.

My Lords,

Bot castles aren't helping us at all to make this game better.

Nemanja said:

My Lords,

Bot castles aren't helping us at all to make this game better.

Please, report them to support.

There are 3 big problems with this approach

1. Bot castles can be re-activated easily. This should not be possible but we have seen it many tines - they even get protection bubbles.

2. Bot castles are now using Gateway of Chance to relocate to random new locations making it much more difficult to track them all.

3. Relying on the community to police the map has made the devs very lazy. We can help but need to know that our efforts are being taken seriously by plarium.

Unusual activity should automatically be flagged by the system and investigated.

Most bots do not collect scrolls nor build units. They don't build walls nor trade on the market - this is all unusual activity and should be easy to detect.

Snowgoon said:

Nemanja said:

My Lords,

Bot castles aren't helping us at all to make this game better.

Please, report them to support.

There are 3 big problems with this approach

1. Bot castles can be re-activated easily. This should not be possible but we have seen it many tines - they even get protection bubbles.

2. Bot castles are now using Gateway of Chance to relocate to random new locations making it much more difficult to track them all.

3. Relying on the community to police the map has made the devs very lazy. We can help but need to know that our efforts are being taken seriously by plarium.

Unusual activity should automatically be flagged by the system and investigated.

Most bots do not collect scrolls nor build units. They don't build walls nor trade on the market - this is all unusual activity and should be easy to detect.

As stated before.Please report all known bots to Support at http://support.plarium.com/enstormfall/Tickets/Submit/Step1/48

I'm too busy and my e-mails are filled with spam

This is what an active bot looks like http://prntscr.com/cx6a1w

Bots are a disadvantage, we once had to scout and be active for at least hour for raids to gain resources, 

Now we can just warp to a bot filled location and know we will be favored in resources, 

It's ruining all PLARIUM games, and what many of us used to enjoy about the game, 

Sure these bots give the smaller levels advantages, but also you grow to not knowing how to play the game with strategy, 

compared to what the game was like when it was new and raiding was more a challenge, 

now resources are given practically freely .. and many players think it's good thing,

if it keeps up the game will be ruined by bots and the players that won't fight to get rid of them will be the blame

Plarium didnt create the bots ?

That masses on bots in lines and fields made hackers ?

Cant imagine that really, not in this dimensions if you look in server 2 you see fast a difference. Nobody can put that much castles in a server in short time.

Even in other Plarium games (soldiers inc, etc) are bots. It would mean that all games were hacked.

I never saw that a bot made any offers in market i saw "inactive" players there whose put offers for scrolls in market but never a bot.

Bots are a disadvantage, we once had to scout and be active for at least hour for raids to gain resources, 

Now we can just warp to a bot filled location and know we will be favored in resources, 

It's ruining all PLARIUM games, and what many of us used to enjoy about the game, 

Sure these bots give the smaller levels advantages, but also you grow to not knowing how to play the game with strategy, 

compared to what the game was like when it was new and raiding was more a challenge, 

now resources are given practically freely .. and many players think it's good thing,

if it keeps up the game will be ruined by bots and the players that won't fight to get rid of them will be the blame

 



 The game doesnt will be ruined by bots, i could say the same about the blackmarket all ruin it if they need it to get 24/7 para stats or to buy a massive army. For players are not spending money on the game they are got to replace doesnt mean that they are bad players in PvP. I took them to replace my troops but i hit big walls of troops in PvP that is how i used them and to make lost arts.