CoC is now failing as a mobile device game
One of the most alluring draws for playing games on a smart phone, tablet, or other mobile device is quickness of access. How many times have you opened Angry Birds or Temple Run when you had a few minutes to spare, were waiting for a bus, or wanted to take a short break from work or studying? You open the game, press start, and are playing within seconds. Then you finish after 4-5 minutes and go back to what you were doing. For the most part, with occasional exceptions, this is how mobile device games achieve success, along with simplicity of play and a few other factors.
Clash of Clans used to do this well. (It may still at low town hall levels.) However, with the dreadful new loot system, the further one progresses in the game, the more that CoC starts to fail as a mobile device game. Pick another favorite game that you like to play on your phone/tablet. What is appealing about that game? I'd wager that, regardless of what game it is, the fact that you can open it and begin playing (i.e. experiencing and interacting with the true action of the game) within 5-10 seconds is among your top reasons for liking it.
Due to the awful new loot system, this characteristic of quick play and its appeal are now almost completely lost for me with Clash of Clans. Here's what a typical "instance" of playing Clash of Clans used to look like:
Log on -> check collectors (15 seconds) -> fill any CC requests (15 seconds) -> retrain troops/set new army to train in Barracks (15 seconds) -> search for a raid (1-2 minutes) -> complete raid (2-3 minutes) -> log out
All in all, the above would take around 6 minutes. Of course, one would occasionally watch a replay or raid twice or spend time chatting with clan mates, but sessions longer than 10 minutes were extremely uncommon. Most importantly, I could always count on initiating a raid within 2-3 minutes (at most!) once I opened the game.
Here's what my typical log-in looks like now:
Log on -> same first three actions (45 seconds) -> search for a raid (5-15 minutes) -> complete raid (2-3 minutes) -> log out.
This makes each log-in closer to a minimum of 10 minutes, with many lasting closer to 20 or even longer. More importantly, to my initial point, what ends up happening a majority of the time these days is that I log on to CoC and am not able to begin playing, i.e. experiencing the true action of the game, for over 10 minutes.
This is why Clash of Clans is now failing as a mobile device game for me. Yes, I sometimes get lucky and still find raids within 1-2 minutes, but most of the time (for the past 2 months since the new loot system was introduced), I now spend well over 6-8 minutes pressing next next next next next next next next next before I can actually play the game. In fact, oftentimes, I end up giving up after 10+ minutes and not even raiding because that waiting or "down" time in my real life has now passed.
Supercell, it's beyond time to fix the pervasive and widely-acknowledged problem of terrible loot and extensive searching and stop failing as a mobile game. Give us a way to find decent loot consistently and actually play your game without wasting 10, 15, 20 minutes every time we open the game. It's not how mobile games are meant to be played, and it's making -- even forcing, for some -- thousands of players to give up on you and your game.
I just pressed next 750 times
Last week I stopped playing the game after pressing next 300 times. This time I decided to keep my cool and keep pressing next until I found a decent raid. I encountered 5 bases with 200k+ gold.
It were bases I couldn't attack for a profit though, because the gold was scattered across 4 storages. After pressing next for around 500 times I found the first suitable base with 192k gold. Most of it was in storages, but the collectors did show some gold. Because of the bad design I would have been able to get it all. But since I already pressed next 500 times I needed at least 500k loot to make a profit, so I kept pressing next:rolleyes:. Then after something like 700 nexts I found the second raidable base with 163k gold mainly in collectors. Eventually after 750 I decided it was enough and found a base with 160k gold mainly in the storages. I got a little bit over 100k.
I saw another thread today about inactives being pushed to back of the search queue. The discussion went something like: inactives get removed vs no they're just being pushed to the end of the search queue etc. etc. since not one of the 750 bases were inactive I think we can conclude that inactives are so far back in the queue we can regard them as removed.
My trophy range was 1550 and the time was 15.45 GMT+1 when I started. Because I am a TH10 this exercise cost me 750k gold
