Originally Posted by
Gregbomb
Greetings,
Let me first start off with saying that I'm a big supporter of CoC and do feel it is the most superior game available as a free application, personally. With that said, I've also given CoC a review in the past and stated how great of a game it is but had mentioned ONE major gripe. This gripe is in how slow unit production is which makes the game incredibly difficult to play actively and consistently. The problem I have is there are currently too many crutches on players on what is required to be paid for via gems in order to play the game (especially from an active perspective, I.E multiple hours per day). For example, boosting anything requires gems (barracks, spell factory, resource collectors), upgrading buildings quicker requires gems, refilling missing resources requires gems, obtaining a hero champion without having enough resources requires gems, etc.
Over the holidays SuperCell decided to change, specifically, barracks boosting from 25 gems to 1 gem for 45 minutes of boosting. I cannot begin to explain on how much this change increased not only mine, but many guild members (and I'm sure many of you) desire to playing actively. Now that the holidays have ended, the barracks boosting have increased to 20 gems for 4 hour boosting. I see two issues with this, for one, many players most likely don't have the time to take full advantage of 4 straight hours of playing. Secondly, in order to boost even four barracks for 4 hours each, it would require 80 gems. I understand that this is most likely a business move, but 80 gems for a 4 hour boosting session is ridiculous and is unobtainable by even the "hardcore" players that dedicate a great wealth of time to CoC. The beauty of the 1 gem for 45 minute boosting was that the required gems were easily obtainable for even players that didn't play "hardcore", on a daily basis without having to purchase gems, but simply from harvesting your lands and/or achievements. Currently, the way the mechanics work with boosting the barracks make it impossible to consistently boost when desired, and it forces the player to have to buy gems in order to play actively. As I said from the start, troop production is too long in my opinion, and if boosting isn't available to even the non-hardcore players then it changes the whole meta of how the game should be played, and from experience it seems like it makes it a more passive game where the player gets on, queues their troops which will take 1 hour+, grab their resources, and then just log out. Previously, I would get on and stay on for hours on end, as my troops were being fully completed within 10-15 minutes.
SuperCell, just think about this. Allow players to more actively play your game, it will increase their willingness to purchase gems for other reasons (I.E building that archer tower quicker, refilling their entire gold collector, purchasing the archer queen through gems, etc.). Further, look into additional alternatives to increase player willingness to purchase gems (I.E add more awesome decorations that require gems, allow a plot boost which speeds up the time of all of the player's defense structures which are being upgraded (or even all buildings overall), and so forth), but PLEASE do not put a crutch on players that wish to actively play your game!
Please bring boosting back down to 1 gem for 45 minutes, or if you desire the 4 hour time range for barracks boosting then reduce the gem cost from 20 gems to 5 gems per barracks. 4 barracks x 5 gems each = 20 gems for a 4 hour session of playing. That seems much more manageable than 80 gems for a 4 hour boosting period.
Thank you for reading,
Gregbomb
