There are No Victors of Clan Wars in Clash of Clans by Supercell
INTRODUCTION:
Over the past four months, I have found a new type of entertainment in the game Clash of Clans by Supercell. It is not only challenging but I have met new friends around the globe that I look forward to chatting with on-line most days. They are clan mates in the game.
Clans are groups of up to 50 players that join forces to defeat other players in a well designed on-line environment. A player may go up against game generated enemies in the single play campaign or find bases of real players in the world-wide game and try out their tactics against the design of tens of thousands of people doing the same. In either case, finding comradery in a clan has made the game exponentially more exciting.
There are many games available that are much like this one, some are highly successful and others are not. Success is not just a product of clever design and graphics, it also involves a hidden measure that is the primary control of profitability.
WHY ARE THESE GAMES SUCCESSFUL?
Most of these "pay as you play" games have a free-of-charge element to them. This is designed to allow a player to experience the game to a point that when they wish to move the game to another level, they must pay for more in the game. Sometimes this comes very early in a game and other times it is possible to play the game endlessly without ever paying a single penny, though some types of advancement may be limited.
Clash of Clans is the later. People play and thoroughly enjoy the game without ever paying a single dime. The measure of financial success for the company comes in the time it takes to make certain upgrades in the game. A very patient person will never find the need for any cash spent. A more impetuous player may sink anywhere from five dollars up to the thousands that some have been known to pay.
Here is how it works, Supercell knows that if a certain upgrade takes seven days to complete a certain percentage of players will have enough patience to wait while a smaller percentage will anti up a little bit of cash to hurry it along. If that same upgrade is changed to ten days, the percentages change. Not by much, but they change in favor of the people who will pay cold hard cash. The longer the time to complete, the higher the percentage of people that will pay for advancements in the game.
Along the same lines, though, Supercell knows that making the same upgrade take longer will cause a percentage of players to just quit playing the game at all which will, of course, reduce the number of people that will pay. It is all a very finely tuned balancing act that can be cleverly managed by a skilled team. This has been demonstrated by hundreds even thousands of games that anyone can find on the Internet.
GAME PLAY IN CLASH OF CLANS
My personal approach to game play in Clash of Clans has an economic element to it. The process starts with an upgrade that needs to be done. The player has three choices:
1. They may patiently wait for their own gold mines or elixir collectors to product enough resources to fund the upgrade,
2. They may raid other player's bases to collect the resources needed faster or
3. They may buy resources for cash from Supercell for instant gratification.
Personally, I choose to raid bases, but in doing so, I must know how much my army costs to create so that I can find a base to loot that will provide enough return to make the battle worth my while. This causes me to look at every aspect of the game with economics in mind constantly asking, "Can I really make any more resources by attacking this base and spending resources?" If a base is too costly and/or the reward is too little I have the option to pass it by and look for a better victim for my army.
It is a fun game if you like that type of environment but, until recently it was a one-on-one experience.
CLAN WARS IS INTRODUCED
In April 2014, Supercell added a new element to the game that was highly anticipated and well marketed. They devised a way that a whole Clan of up to 50 players could join forces and be pitted against another, similarly armed clan of the same number of members. The methods devised for matching clans is nothing short of ingenious and the process is well thought out spanning a 48 hour period for preparation and war. When it launched the excitement was palpable!
One "feature" of the new Clan War was that rewards for participating in the battles would not be taken from other players but would be resources that would be created solely for the rewards. This was one major "feature" that got a lot of people excited who understood the game and the whole process.
THE WAY I CALCULATE PROFITABILITY
Personally, I participated in a dozen wars before I came to an ugly realization, though. During any given clan war, the participants have the opportunity to make two and only two raids on enemy bases. Of course, for success, one must make a better-than-normal army, but what is "normal" anyway?
My regular army that I create for nearly every raid I make costs about 65,000 units of elixir. If I opt to include spells I may spend up to another 65,000 units of elixir. The bases I attack, therefore, must be able to yield at least 65,000 to 130,000 units of elixir just to break even. With that in mind, I look for bases that will produce anywhere between 100,000 to 200,000 units of elixir and adjust my attack in relation to the loot I will receive. That would be my "normal" army.
However, for the Clan War, I felt that I needed an army that would be stronger so I started to find victory with a configuration that cost 390,000 units of elixir. With two such attacks I found I was spending 780,000 units on my own armies.
Additionally, this does not take in to account my normal generosity in donating troops to other players which can easily entail another 300,000 units of elixir or more!
SO HERE IS THE RUB
At this level of play, I always envisioned that the winner of a Clan War would walk away with a great prize! Anticipation nipped at the heals of all who played but after spening over a million units of elixir in a game my maximum reward was a paltry 400,000 units of elixir. After participating in a dozen wars and finding myself literally bankrupt in the game I reviewed my game play and determined that this is not working at all for me!
CONCLUSION
This is what it boiled down to... Supercell is always looking for a way to make the game more profitable for the company, that is understandable... more power to them when they can! But in this game, they figured out how to get people to spend a whole lot more resources than they have in the past all the while calculating that more people would spend more cash for accelerated game play.
The thing that they tout as a "feature" by generating new resources for the game "out of thin air" is a problem! They are getting people to spend far more resources than the war could ever return. This makes people broke and more desparate to spend cold hard cash for more resources from Supercell.
For me this is a discouraging development. In response I have been hanging out at the bottom of our clan's list and have not been included in the wars that pass. I will particiapte when I fall into a war, but it is my personal way avoid unecessary expenses and develop the strength of my base and my army. At a later date I know this will change when my base is better defended and my army can defeat tougher targets.
Can't find a match in clan wars - 6 days and counting
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Thetetrafish
Still no resolution, have tried three more times, eventually the game just stops searching and then nothing. Clan is understandably getting restless, please help!
Same issue with our clan. We agreed to 1 war every week and have done 3 so far. Didn't have any problems on 4/25 but when we tried to find a match on 5/3, it started timing out. It's been 6 days now and still nothing. Search & search then it times out.
We have loyal members but they are getting frustrated.
This is very frustrating!
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Zombiemeatballs
We've been searching since Saturday. It's been 6 days. No matches found. Nada. Zip. Zilch.
I really wish that an admin or someone from Supercell would at least acknowledge this so that I have something to say back to the clan. My clan is 95% between silver II and gold I, and we have searched both 40 and 45s, I cannot imagine we are a difficult clan to sync up to. In addition, it took between 5-15 minutes for the previous 10 wars so clearly something is wrong.
Talk back to the community
Wow the ghosting continues! Its good to see that supercell doesn't give a f ! Lots of players spend cash on this game! Its time you do something about the flymode ♥♥♥♥♥! They figure out how to 3 star a base by using the flymode over and over again! Fix this..
