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CottageRose
08-10-14, 03:08 PM
Starting with the tea party, the art style has drastically departed from the original concept. The Faerie Respite and Harvest Pergola are consistent with the old European fairy tale kingdoms. The tea party, which could have come from a cartoon, followed by the pink tent blob that ate Chicago, really cannot be blended with the classic, fine-detailed buildings and towns we have built for our peoples.

I still have the link to a CS blog post showcasing the original sketches and beautiful design artwork:
http://blog.storm8.com/post/34250540421/the-art-of-castle-story

I don't like New Coke. I want my olde worlde kingdom back, please?

ETA: Started separate thread to for suggestions/feedback on building and other content design, not just the icon. :)

brdwybaby
08-10-14, 08:31 PM
Yes. So agree! That original artwork makes me so sad. So beautiful, and now so lazy. So juvenile. So slimy. And where are those purple and blue trees?! Give me those!

vednir
08-10-14, 09:46 PM
You'll also note that many of the original buildings could be rotated to face all 4 directions while many of the newer productions only have 2 directions to choose from.

I think a lot of his has to do with the clamor for weekly updates and therefore weekly, more hurried productions. Castle Story used to not be updated as frequently and there was no expectation that there would be a weekly update. However as the player base has matured and people have run out of released content to work through it's likely TL has noted that there has been a drop-off of gem purchases and therefore a need to create more content to generate more revenue for the company. That in turns requires cutting more corners in terms of the artwork as well as simple things such as spellchecking all of the dialogue.

I think what you're seeing is simply the need for quantity over quality to support TL's ravenous player base. If the number of sun stones from the current limited time event (did I mention the need to drive up gem purchases?) is an indication the TL player base is massive and does not appear to be significantly affected the rather formulaic (time-limited content) and cookie cutter (grind common or farm rare drops to attain the week's prize) approach that TL takes to all of their other various Story games.

CS will never be back to where it once was, a somewhat unique product in the TL stable of games. Be glad that the money from gem purchases has not dried up yet for them to release a new and improved Castle Story 2.

Queenzod
08-10-14, 11:15 PM
I think what you're seeing is simply the need for quantity over quality to support TL's ravenous player base. If the number of sun stones from the current limited time event (did I mention the need to drive up gem purchases?) is an indication the TL player base is massive and does not appear to be significantly affected the rather formulaic (time-limited content) and cookie cutter (grind common or farm rare drops to attain the week's prize) approach that TL takes to all of their other various Story games.

CS will never be back to where it once was, a somewhat unique product in the TL stable of games. Be glad that the money from gem purchases has not dried up yet for them to release a new and improved Castle Story 2.

I've been wondering if there's any way to calculate how many players are in this game. Let's say for the summer festival that people are averaging 200 stones per day and we've had 3 days of collecting. That's about 600 stones per person. From the group counter, we're up to 70,000,000 stones. A little division and that makes about 116,000 players worldwide. Not too shabby!

Anyone who's better at math want to refine this a bit? My calculations may be wildly incorrect. :)

Liloze
08-11-14, 06:40 AM
I've been wondering if there's any way to calculate how many players are in this game. Let's say for the summer festival that people are averaging 200 stones per day and we've had 3 days of collecting. That's about 600 stones per person. From the group counter, we're up to 70,000,000 stones. A little division and that makes about 116,000 players worldwide. Not too shabby!

Anyone who's better at math want to refine this a bit? My calculations may be wildly incorrect. :)

Let's also consider that not the whole 116,000 buy gems but half, there's 58,000 paying money for gems.
Now the question is how much money is spent on gems, basically we all wait for the sale, and the best deal I guess ( for those who cannot afford more is the 530 gems for 14 / or was it 15 dollars? lol I don't remember.
So let's consider they ALL buy this deal it means $812000$ (58 x 14) every time there's a sale!
Of course that's all speculations lol. I am sure it is way more than this :cool:

iAyun
08-11-14, 02:06 PM
Our new game Castle Story is almost available to users worldwide! We are super excited about this game, as it has some of the finest art of any game we've released thus far (and that's saying something)!
I quote very old post (almost 2 years ago). I wonder GroupMagma is still very proud with current CS's art.


You'll also note that many of the original buildings could be rotated to face all 4 directions while many of the newer productions only have 2 directions to choose from.

CS will never be back to where it once was, a somewhat unique product in the TL stable of games. Be glad that the money from gem purchases has not dried up yet for them to release a new and improved Castle Story 2.
IMHO,
I think they want to save resource. The app is getting heavy, a lot of items, a lot of sync data to the server, weekly story update..
I think they need to balance between good art and app's performance..

mrosmeows
08-14-14, 03:29 PM
Are all these updates going to change that gaudy looking tent? And the community prizes look like a child's room. Your programming is aimed for adults yet my board is looking like a child's game more and more each week. I have two friends that play these games and started with castle story until they saw the ugly end result. What are you guys doing I don't get it..... It keeps going downhill

jimboser
08-14-14, 05:39 PM
Just more decorations to put in storage. :rolleyes:

Liloze
08-15-14, 07:39 AM
I quote very old post (almost 2 years ago). I wonder GroupMagma is still very proud with current CS's art.


IMHO,
I think they want to save resource. The app is getting heavy, a lot of items, a lot of sync data to the server, weekly story update..
I think they need to balance between good art and app's performance..

My suggestion is that they cut the update from every week to 2/month or even 1 I accept that but in return, we need the same standards of gorgeous graphics we are used to and love in this game.
Rather than adding 4 new items every month, one is sufficient,on one hand this will resolve the app getting heavy!
On the other hand, this one update will also solve the lack of space problem in our kingdoms, which result in less whining for space/ expansions.
All of the above will be giving TL the necessary time to work and produce absolutely wonderful items like they used to, let alone that long term goals will keep us players busy !
Just my 2 cents, cheers :)