Abunch of us the chat have agreed that we no longer wish to have glowstone for crew battles, we just want the 6 regular battles without out worrying about late cheesy glowstoning. So anyone that agrees to end the use of glowstone in crew battles can add their name here please. Maybe other uses for glowstone can be used to re-enter draft tourney Ez

+1 Glowstones encourage players to log in for the final 30 minutes of a battle and stare at the scoreboard while deciding whether to use glowstones or not. I find this last minute drama to be a tedious commitment to be online at an arbitrary time rather than exciting gameplay. The current system places great importance on the final moments of each battle due to sniping. Players whose timezone or schedule does not align with the end of the battle are at a disadvantage. They must choose between using glowstones preemptively (and possibly wasting them) or allowing the opposing crew a greater chance to win. Conversely, players who are able to coordinate a snipe are at an advantage. They are able to steal wins from stronger opponents by being present at the right time. I find it frustrating when fights are determined by attendance rather than skill. The cost of glowstones also significantly reduces the net weekly crew reward. If a player in the rank 1 crew uses 3 glowstones a week (a 20 gem value), his weekly reward becomes 70 - 20 = 50 gems; the same as a rank 11-15 crew that used 0 glowstones. Arguably top crews compete for faster crew card unlocks or pride, but I think they should receive more gems too. PS. Glowstones should be exchangeable for elf boobs.

I agree with all of the above

I definitely agree with glowstone being too expensive, but dev also need to get paid. And you can't make a crew war with just "skills only" which will also translate to "the most time/money spent on the game" which leads to newer player/crew which won't be able to compete for the top. People who are willing to sacrifice their time to organize a "snipe" use a legit strategy in my opinion and fought for the win which they deserve in this case. What I'd like to see is a reduction of usable glowstone, if people can only use one glowstone per battle it'll put less presure, and the crew which can get the most activity has still a chance to win even if he's less powerfull. He'll have to plan it, and that's part of a war so perfect for the philosophy. tl;dr reduce the use of glowstone to 1 per battle, or 20 per crew (so they can chose who will glow more)

glowstones ended my marriage +1 

I love the glowstone system as is. Cheesy? Never sure what that term means. I think it often means "I don't want to play that way, they do and I either must deal with their playstyle or I lose." Del is right in that it encourages players to log in in the final 30 minutes (if they are trying to conserve glowstone use). Not sure that is a bad thing, since he rightly points out there are trade offs (use early, or lessen chances of winning). I agree, it changes the nature of the game, but I think that is precisely the point. "6 battles and that's it" favors those with better cards and less activity and less buy in (literally). Glowstones allow for an alternate strategy. Extra bonus: top crews pay for the rest of us to play. Don't get me wrong, it is certainly valid to not want glowstone play. But I think it is a nice element, (potentially) gives devs more money, and is blanaced in that it is not unlimited.

I would rather see the new players spending these gems on helping their collections get better instead of waisting them on glowstones. So either way the devs are getting their $$ when those gems are being spent on packs or singles shop.

Thanks for all the feedback. In my experience Glowstones are the sort of item that are worse in perception than in reality. Many free players worry that they can reduce PvP to pay-to-win style gaming. I think it's important to understand a few things though: 1- It's actually extremely difficult, in fact close to impossible, for Crews to switch rankings if every attack is locked to the same number of battles. Glowstones provide a mechanical means to more attacks. If implemented correctly this should translate to some Crews strategically deciding to boost certain attacks to have a better chance against a superior opponent. That is their real goal: mobility within the rankings. 2- This game like any game does need to make some profit. When designing the economics of the game it's important for us to figure out where that profit is going to come from. Many card games have that profit mostly tied up in cards, with premium sets only available for dollars. We have been able to avoid that, since gems are readily available to free players and thus all cards are. I think this is a really strong point for Storm Wars for free players. In order to keep up that type of distribution model though we do need other paths to profit. And at the end of the day we can only sell things that players actually care about and actually will buy. 3- The last-minute sniping in Crews is, I agree, a bad thing. But: First of all, sniping is always going to be a tactic in PvP to some extent, and second and more importantly the sniping we have is actually more related to our Glowstone limit of 3 than anything else. We've been considering removing the Glowstone limit altogether. Yes, I realize free players might imagine this will create a pay-to-win scenario but there's really no reason to think that. If people were trying to buy wins in Crew they would already be doing that with the limit, and they very rarely are. 4- The ***real*** limitation on battles in Crew fights is time. Fighting 24 battles (6 + 3x Glowstones) takes most players 30 minutes as it is, and that's a more significant barrier than running out of Glowstones themselves. It certainly also means there's a hard limit of not many more than 3 Glowstones someone could use successfully, anyway. --- These are my current thoughts on Glowstones. I agree the last-minute sniping is annoying but I don't think we want to remove them altogether. Actually I think it makes more sense to make them more useful/usable and probably unlimited. Note that if Glowstones became more regularly used and easy to use, I could definitely see them becoming cheaper, as some players have suggested.

I mostly agree with the above (as stated in my first message) I'll just add : It's very time consuming, so if you introduce a no limit for glowstone, please make a button "speed * 50" available in crew battles xD

I don't mean to be a downer but i don't think unlimited glowstones would solve the problem, What about a PvE addition to crews that you could spend Glowstones to take down a Super Luther or work together to wittle down an army for certain rewards,

Unlimited Glowstone use for a crew battle is the dumbest thing i've heard !! I know if i see that get implemented i will never buy gems again nor will i use glowstones again even if we have to take a lose for it..

I am ambivalent on glowstones. The current system imo overempasizes player ability to be present near battle end. I think this is likely to reduce engagement with the game for players who are serious but not regularly able to log in at odd hours (for them). These are likely to be precisely the players who spend cash, so tis reduced engagement is bound to be bad for game economics. Removing glowstones from crew war makes that a straight up comparison of winrates and ability to at least check in for the basic six. I've thought bout it and I think that would be worse then things are now. Crew war needs a tactical element and not be a mechanical winrate comparison to be interesting. And being interesting is the entire point of crew wars or player engagement suffers. Unlimited glowstones is a disasrous idea I think since it will allow any crew with a decent winrate to buy victory if they're willing to spend. The time limit seems a moot point since 2 minutes/battle would allow a player to do 330 battles at a cost of about 360 gems, few will go that far and fewer will keep up repeatedly. This is bound to emphasize final 30 minute sniping even more as preemptve glowing become pointless since the other crew can always raise and preempting becomes a waste of glowstones. Crews with a limited willingness to spend are likely to just not glow at all and take watever position that lands them in while top 5 at least is bought with little regard to collection quality or activity. Overall glowstone sales are bound to go down not up in this situation as most players will be deterred from glowing at all by demonstrated willingness of a few to burn lots of gems. Unlimited glowing might be ok if crew rewards are raised dramtically so buying victory can become worthwhile. This would need to see rewards for the top 5 exceeding 500 gems/week I think so that messes with the game economics pretty badly as well. A very partial solution to the last minute sniping might be to allow 1 glowstone to be used in every third of a battle. Or, cutting glowstone limit to 2, allow one in each half. Crews can then better extrapolate where they are in the battle and adjust their glowing accordingly. Note that the inability to save it all up will force players to glow earlier if they want to force the issue. My expectation is that this will result in an overall increase in glowstone use as players who would otherwise have saved for the final thirty minutes and end up not glowing glow earlier. This system would favor players who are able to attend throughout the battle, although favoring those with very high attendance might not be a bad thing. theres my 2 cents

I agree that the current glowstone system is quite bad. On a side note, pragmatically it's not worth it, unless you really want to go for Rank 1. If you don't, you are essentially cutting into your own prize for your Crew rank, completely destroying the point of the high rank to begin with. That, and for beginning players it is a noobtrap. It is a terrible idea to spend gems on Glowstones when you just start out, but appearantly beginning players are tempted to do so, which is a bad, BAD idea. Prohibiting this one way or another - the sooner the better - is necessary. Having Fame level 25 seems like a good start.

What saddens me is that Glowstones are assumed to be a NECESSARY part of Crew Battles, Sir_Valimont. Whether you limit it to three or unlimit it, basically, a crew with 6 fights per member cannot compete against a crew with, say, 18 fights per member, unless the difference in card quality is so high that the second crew simply can't win anough battles (which won't happen unless the crews are more than 10-15 places apart). The so-called "sniping" is actually only an attempt to control the glowstone cost, and has nothing to do with the actual glowstone use. Because of what I pointed above, crew rank is basically dependent on pay-2-win already, UNLESS people all agree on not glowstoning their way to victory (which is the point of this post). It's either everybody or none, as long as "some" use it, those some are going to win against those who don't. I understand the revenue side of things, so the question is: Do you want to base the tactical element of Crew Battles on the game's income, or some other tactical element that doesn't actually depend on the teams' budgets? Since, especially if you unlimit the use of glowstones, it will be the heavy spenders that pull the team victories through, an NOT concentrated team effort or any cooperation. This observation is supported by being in a crew that have been withing top 5 during the introduction of glowstones, and seeing how the best players of the crew might have achieved 100+ wins a weekly season, while the highest spenders easily had 200+ wins or more. After said spenders left the crew for other, higher (or now higher) crews, the crew rank went down by 5 ranks mostly based on lack of dedicated sepnders.

for the record I have not put a penny into stormwars since i started the NightsWatch so for you people who think spending is the problem i beg to differ. I cant be supportive of removing glows they are what make the game fun when it comes to the crew system. As for making them unlimited I cant say id be supportive of that idea either. get the 5 best players together on 1 crew and they will end this game for all if unlimited. Limits are there for a reason.

I think that glows are good for game in general. Dont remove them pls. But make unlimited glows... This would be too crazy. We dont have unlimited money so we will can see only 1 crew in top if this happen, im sure of this. People that dont have problems to spend gems and more gems in glows will join in this top crew, and they will stay there forever. In other side, if you want enlarge limit of glows maybe you should think about give more rewards in crew season. For example: all people can use now 6 glows, but rewards for top 1 will be now 140 gems, second place will get 130 etc. I have other idea for remove snipe problem (not all people can be online 24h). Enlarge time of crew fight to 24 hours (with 12h i think that will work too). With this you dont need remove or change limit of glows.

> Yes, I realize free players might imagine this will create a pay-to-win scenario but there's really no reason to think that. If people were trying to buy wins in Crew they would already be doing that with the limit, and they very rarely are. I think you've been out of top5 for too long. 3Stones already ask a lot of commitment from crew members. Don't increase that limit please, it won't help the lower crews you're thinking about.

Unlimited stones is definitely a stupid idea... In that way someone could be alone in a crew and get #1 by spending stones during 11 hours. So why not make a button "pay to win" it will be the same...

We always appreciate player feedback :) and I really hope the community appreciates how open the dev team is on Storm Wars. We talk to players, we take player advice, and we're always available even for criticism. Hopefully you don't think you really need to make petitions so much as just collect some viewpoints and work with us to make the game better. Let's keep things on a positive note! :D I do want to point out that probably we are not removing Glowstones. It just doesn't make sense for us to remove them completely. But, this is a very helpful thread to understand what players like and don't like about them, so we can change how they work and how they're distributed. We always want Storm Wars to be a game that is the ***best possible game*** for free players, even though we all know and understand that this is a product that has to create a profit for the dev team, otherwise we won't be able to keep working on the project. I think we're doing a good job and appreciate everyone's great comments! I'm sure we'll come up with a better system for Glowstones soon after iOS that will be good for all types of players. :) – Sir V

Sir V, We do appreciate yhe devs willingness to listen to players. Players put time and effort in constructive criticism to help you make this game ever better, I think you also appreciate this. Everybody understands that the game needs income. In a sense f2p players exist to provide a larger and richer target set for p2w players. The key to improving game income is player engagement. If players are strongly engaged they are more likely to spend. Crew is the sort of thing that gets players engaged, but to optimize this, people should only be allowed to buy small incremental advantages so that a high number of players sees it as potentially useful to buy the advantage. Letting people buy a nuke discourages buying as few players are willing to shell out whatever it takes to outnuke the biggest spender and small purchases are made useless by the nuke. Now glowstones put some strategy, including resource management, in crew wars and thats good. But the current implementation overemphasizes presence near end of war and with players all over the world that means wars are to likely to be decided by whoever has the most people in a favorabe timezone. Thats not good especialy as its likely to damage engagement. I proposed a very partial solution above. Another option might be to let crews declare a no-glowstone war. Let the attacker declare no glowstones and they cannot be used. Crews can still challenge higher ranked crews by glowing but attackers can avoid ambushes which is likely to make attackers more willing to attack someone near their level. Its not without risk since an attacker who performs poorly and declared no glows cannot extricate himself with a glowstone barrage. A good idea to increase strategy in crew war and encourage buying would be to let pleyers or crews buy permanent or temporary advantages for crew wars. This would let players invest in crew wars while deemphasising last hour presence. Ideally, crews would be allowed to charge an entry fee lest new players benefit for free from the investement exisiting players have made.

I think Glowstones may or not be the problem of Crew system. For me, the problem is that I do not really know if my enemies are using Glowstones or not against my crew and when. The only way of doing this is checking the enemy crew very often, noting who has connected and who has not and figuring out what is going on. With that information, if I think a crew that is weaker than my crew is in a much better position than my crew, then with repeated attacks you can erode the Glowstones of the enemy Crew (which are normally used by the same members of the Crew also) so it opens a medium-term strategy to increase your crew rank. As you can imagine, this work is really really tedious: involves notekeeping, being online at critical moments and figuring out things hoping that the guess is correct. If an AFTER battle report that can be accesed for some reasonable time gives like some information (table or even a cool graphic) about who battled at each moment and when glowstones are activated from each side, then I think: - it will add fun - battles will be commented inside the crew to improve performance - new tactics and counter tactics would come round, knowing that they make sense, not being figured out - glowstones would be important part of the tactic. If enemy crew spends 6 glowstones to beat your glowstone saving crew, you can be sure that if you can attack them 6 or more times in a season, sooner or later they would go down. - bad blood is encouraged between close ranked crews (well, obviously in good manner...) And with that information, maybe we still decide that glowstones are not fun. But maybe we like them! Is it very difficult to implement? ----------------------------------------- Also, and not related to glowstones, I think that crew system is too static and players are moving up to high ranked crews (hey, we...the top5 crew are recruiting, do you want to make 30 gems more a week rather than waiting for months to your original crew to make it to the top?) rather than crews going up as they grow experience. I personally think that could be solved by making harder for top ranked crews to replace lost members having to wait some weeks unless they recruit a newbie (less than one month player). Then crews would be academies for new people and ranks would be more dynamic. I have put it here just to complete the crew improvements that I think will make the crew system more fun but if this comment is out of place should go in another thread, please accept my apologies. Regards Kalostro

I can't say I enjoy using glowstones but I don't really know an alternative. I'd rather spend those gems improving my deck, but the mentality among many middle ranked crew is that glowing is necessary to get ahead. And in some ways that's true. I wonder if we could do a social experiment and get rid of them temporarily to see how the ranks change? Nothing permanent, but just to see what happens.

> *Originally posted by **[ElloryQueen](/forums/32949/topics/734766?page=1#11191612)**:* > I can't say I enjoy using glowstones but I don't really know an alternative. I'd rather spend those gems improving my deck, but the mentality among many middle ranked crew is that glowing is necessary to get ahead. And in some ways that's true. I wonder if we could do a social experiment and get rid of them temporarily to see how the ranks change? Nothing permanent, but just to see what happens. You don't have to be in a middle-ranked crew if you need to glow - it cuts directly into your profit. Leaving your crew for a lower-ranked crew may be more profitable.

> *Originally posted by **[Stratocumulus](/forums/32949/topics/734766?page=1#11191943)**:* > > *Originally posted by **[ElloryQueen](/forums/32949/topics/734766?page=1#11191612)**:* > > I can't say I enjoy using glowstones but I don't really know an alternative. I'd rather spend those gems improving my deck, but the mentality among many middle ranked crew is that glowing is necessary to get ahead. And in some ways that's true. I wonder if we could do a social experiment and get rid of them temporarily to see how the ranks change? Nothing permanent, but just to see what happens. > > You don't have to be in a middle-ranked crew if you need to glow - it cuts directly into your profit. Leaving your crew for a lower-ranked crew may be more profitable. I don't really glow all that much, and neither does my crew unless we feel the need to. Thank you for the advice though.