Current Destructive influence of Clan Wars and Suggestions

First, I'd like to share my current clan situation which should illustrate the problems introduced by clan wars.

I'm Co-Leader of a clan called DeathB4Dishonor. We have 42 members currently, 30 of which I like, maybe 20 or so I'm pretty attached to, and a couple not currently in the clan that I wish didn't leave. Up until yesterday, I didn't even know we had a problem. We have been a fantastic clan for several months, with very active, respectful and helpful members. Our leader is a strong leader, smart, and is balanced when making clan decisions. The co-leaders have been pretty good too, we all sacrifice to help the clan, in wars, in troop requests/donations, etc. Troublemakers and disrespectful people get booted, people who want to learn and contribute stay. Seems like a recipe for a great clan, but with us falling apart, it appears it wasn't.

We’ve had members hitting way above their ability in wars for far too long. Members who try to find that right moment to be selfish and throw everything they’ve got for additional loot and that one star. These are good members, but we don’t have any way other than booting to force the issue, and then they are gone. They have become friends, which in itself causes problems. You can boot, but then that adds a lot of stress afterward, you lose a good active clan member and people who like them are now bothered. You can leave them in the clan, but then everyone else is stressed out because of the war situation these behaviors cause. We also have members giving low level troops in clan wars against direction from the leaders, and in most cases we have no idea who did it. We can boot all those troops now (thanks), but its still incredibly frustrating because you have to get all those people to discard them. If they don’t in time, they are stuck with crappy troops that hurt all of us.

We lost several good members to infighting from not warring enough. We lost a co leader yesterday because he was tired of the stupid war decisions by certain members that never get better, and those of us who tolerate it because they are some of the few decent members available to us in the game (with so many other clans recruiting too).

Trying to be understanding of players poor in game decisions has proved impossible. With no recourse to improve our war experience we are left with some very tough decisions that will either impact our current member list or our future member recruiting.

Our choices:

1. Stop warring as often and kill our future recruiting efforts.
   
   This is definitely an option, but doing so will hurt our ability to grow as a clan. It'll be a lot less stressful though, and more fun when we do war, but we'll likely lose several remaining members and most recruited members will leave when they find out.
2. Boot members who consistently make poor decisions involving who they attack and how they attack in wars, and do not listen to help or are unable to execute that help.
   
   This one has become necessary to continue warring twice a week as we are. We are looking at shrinking our clan in a new clan to a very low number, and very slowly trying to recruit. Since there really is no way for us to identify good members from bad members up front, we have to get to know them and see them play and that takes time. Many members bring in friends or family. Often the decision to boot has consequences of losing several members at once, not just one.

These are very tough decisions, decisions that I don't believe a player of clash should have to make. We shouldn't have to decide between fun and competitive. We shouldn't have to choose between Winning and Friends. We also shouldn't have to deal with clan hoppers who only want to war, when war is over they leave, and when they are here they don't contribute, they snipe town halls of high levels, and they are rewarded for that if we win.

Solutions:

1. Provide us with activity information on our members, so we can more quickly identify people who are just there for wars and not interested in building up their knowledge of the game and their ability to play it.
2. Allow leaders to choose who is war eligible, who is not, and how many members war (multiple of 5). Trophies, Town Hall levels and anything of the sort do not tell the whole story about a player and cannot be used to determine eligibility or rank. These things should 100% be a manual process determined by the leaders. Provide a default ranking to those who don't care, but give us the ability to give people a war rank based on who has earned it, and war participation to those who deserve it.
3. Allow people to go "Away from game" when they are going to be away for a while. This would eliminate them from war rankings until they return. This would reduce clan member number jumping a lot from booting inactives that are good members, or good members leaving to help the clan and returning.
4. Make people wait a week before being eligible for war when they join a new clan. This would encourage people to stay in a clan and get better and follow rules to stay. It also would discourage clan hopping to participate in wars and then doing things that hurt the clan in those wars. This also would discourage regular clan hopping, which is another serious recruiting issue.

The clan wars have introduced new problems into chemistry, cohesion, and the entire feel of our clan. We have no way to fix these issues without your help. Many of these have been suggested here before, but they haven’t accompanied a use case as I’ve provided here. Please do something to give us more control over clan membership and war participation. If we fail a second time, I suspect many of us will quit and move on.

Thanks,

Santrega

Last morning as Co-Leader of DeathB4Dishonor

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Originally Posted by Santrega

These are very tough decisions, decisions that I don't believe a player of clash should have to make. We shouldn't have to decide between fun and competitive.
I disagree. You are the only ones who should decide if your clan is fun or competitive. SC should not artificially boost the strength of one clan because they don't want to make the hard decisions to make them competitive with a clan that is willing to actually work towards their goal. If you are committed to mediocrity be happy with winning some and loosing some. If you are committed to winning take action towards that goal.

The clan wars have introduced new problems into chemistry, cohesion, and the entire feel of our clan. We have no way to fix these issues without your help.
Sure you do. You detailed them all already. What you have is a clan identity problem. Half of the people in your clan want it to be a different clan.

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First off, thank you for taking the time to actually create a post instead of a single sentence complaint. It is appreciated that you actually care enough to provide examples and detail your suggestions.

Second, this is about the 100,000 thread on this topic. Please use the search function in the future or just scroll down. I guarantee you will find another identical (but much shorter and less thought through) thread that you could contribute to rather than starting us all over again. I guarantee all of these details have been discussed from both sides ad nauseum.

I am one of the voices against the concept of the "opt-out button", and may be the most outspoken about it. Should be easy to find my more detailed posts on the topic so I won't regurgitate them here. I added my opinion to your core problem to your quote above in italics. Again, my dissenting opinion. You will find plenty of support both philosophical and functionally here. In short I dislike it philosophically because it trivializes the meaning of the word "clan" (after all it is a clan war, not a select-few skirmish). I also believe that it causes a balancing issue that most posters don't even consider. There are counters to it but the only one that holds any weight is, "People can already get around it by dropping and rejoining. It is just difficult and time consuming." Making it easier will just make the balancing problem worse, not better because more clans will exploit it . . . because it is easier.

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Originally Posted by iceageg

First off, thank you for taking the time to actually create a post instead of a single sentence complaint. It is appreciated that you actually care enough to provide examples and detail your suggestions.

Second, this is about the 100,000 thread on this topic. Please use the search function in the future or just scroll down. I guarantee you will find another identical (but much shorter and less thought through) thread that you could contribute to rather than starting us all over again. I guarantee all of these details have been discussed from both sides ad nauseum.

I am one of the voices against the concept of the "opt-out button", and may be the most outspoken about it. Should be easy to find my more detailed posts on the topic so I won't regurgitate them here. I added my opinion to your core problem to your quote above in italics. Again, my dissenting opinion. You will find plenty of support both philosophical and functionally here. In short I dislike it philosophically because it trivializes the meaning of the word "clan" (after all it is a clan war, not a select-few skirmish). I also believe that it causes a balancing issue that most posters don't even consider. There are counters to it but the only one that holds any weight is, "People can already get around it by dropping and rejoining. It is just difficult and time consuming." Making it easier will just make the balancing problem worse, not better because more clans will exploit it . . . because it is easier.

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I know there were other threads that suggested this, as I stated such in my OP. However, honestly, I don't believe anyone has posted actual instances where clan wars have harmed their clan. Clan wars have literally torn apart my clan. Those who want to war more left, those who want to war less left, those who want to get loot at all costs are disliked by those who want to win for the clan.

I believe the benefit of this thread is that it collects all of the things that has harmed my clan together with potential solutions to the problem (whether or not you agree with them).

I concede the fact that many of you might be happy with your situation. Obviously, since we are ending our current clan and starting new, we are making a difficult choice. But having fun in a game shouldn't be this stressful, we shouldn't have to worry about 5 new members and whether or not they'll actually do what they are supposed to do in the war. It should be us making the decisions, as you said, not supercell. We should be able to keep people we like rather than have to part ways, because that's our only choice.

I'm not asking people to rehash arguments, if you have alternative solutions, please feel free to suggest. I disagree that a game should force a player to choose between friend and skill, or fun and competitive. I should be able to do both, but we can't part time do one, and we can't not war.


Also, regarding the balance issues. I disagree because its always a match between two set numbers. It's not poorly balanced if my top 20 face your top 20. The reason you are arguing against it is because your top 30 may be better than my top 30, but your top 20 might not be better than my top 20, and you'd like to still come out on top if we both have 30.

This really doesn't seem like a logical thought. If you are better with 30, go with 30, if you are better with 20, go with 20. Every clan would make the choice and balance it themselves accordingly.

I didn't know this was going to be such a long read when I started, but by the time I realized, I was already "pot committed" and had to finish reading lol.

I can see where you are coming from. My clan doesn't experience the issues your does, but that's mainly because it was started with a group of real life friends, then slowly added mature, reliable, active members. Those members invited their friends with similar values. Everyone is respectful, and likes to war.

You're asking for a lot. I'll try to comment below in red about each of your asks.

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Originally Posted by Santrega

Solutions:

1. Provide us with activity information on our members, so we can more quickly identify people who are just there for wars and not interested in building up their knowledge of the game and their ability to play it. First off, you can monitor how much they donate while not in war. View their stats such as gold grab to see how actively/efficiently they farm. You can judge this by looking at their bases too, to ensure they are not super premies and that their walls are at a respectable level.
2. Allow leaders to choose who is war eligible, who is not, and how many members war (multiple of 5). Trophies, Town Hall levels and anything of the sort do not tell the whole story about a player and cannot be used to determine eligibility or rank. These things should 100% be a manual process determined by the leaders. Provide a default ranking to those who don't care, but give us the ability to give people a war rank based on who has earned it, and war participation to those who deserve. This has been suggested many time, and it often boils down to the fact that this would ruin the fun of clan wars if you could choose who does or doesn't go to war. Workarounds for this are to have certain members drop their trophies, or to leave the clan just before war search, then add them back once the search has begun.
3. Allow people to go "Away from game" when they are going to be away for a while. This would eliminate them from war rankings until they return. This would reduce clan member number jumping a lot from booting inactives that are good members, or good members leaving to help the clan and returning. Again, the same workaround exists; kick (or let them leave) and reinvite as necessary.
4. Make people wait a week before being eligible for war when they join a new clan. This would encourage people to stay in a clan and get better and follow rules to stay. It also would discourage clan hopping to participate in wars and then doing things that hurt the clan in those wars. This also would discourage regular clan hopping, which is another serious recruiting issue. A week is too long. 3 wars could have started and ended in that amount of time and for people who love to war, that's an eternity. Yes, it sucks that you have to take a risk on new players joining your clan when it comes to war, but there's really not much else you can do except judge that player by their visible stats, the design of their base, and the levels and composition of the troops they build to see how they raid normally. Educate them before war begins on the core war rules (no donating ♥♥♥♥ troops, no TH sniping, etc.) and hope they comply.

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My clan usually participates in 30 vs. 30 or 35 vs. 35, so it's a bit easier to manage compared to a full 50 vs. 50 war. We have tried big wars before, and due to similar issues you've faced, we dropped 10+ dead weight players to be left with our "survival of the fittest" clan members we have today. We definitely value quality over quantity.

All I can suggest is that your leaders take the time and effort to truly educate all members, both about rules and strategies, maybe base design and attack tips would help too. If you have a close knit clan, good things will start to happen. Squash any drama quickly because it can poison a clan. Good luck.

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Originally Posted by hawdog

I didn't know this was going to be such a long read when I started, but by the time I realized, I was already "pot committed" and had to finish reading lol.

I can see where you are coming from. My clan doesn't experience the issues your does, but that's mainly because it was started with a group of real life friends, then slowly added mature, reliable, active members. Those members invited their friends with similar values. Everyone is respectful, and likes to war.

You're asking for a lot. I'll try to comment below in red about each of your asks.



My clan usually participates in 30 vs. 30 or 35 vs. 35, so it's a bit easier to manage compared to a full 50 vs. 50 war. We have tried big wars before, and due to similar issues you've faced, we dropped 10+ dead weight players to be left with our "survival of the fittest" clan members we have today. We definitely value quality over quantity.

All I can suggest is that your leaders take the time and effort to truly educate all members, both about rules and strategies, maybe base design and attack tips would help too. If you have a close knit clan, good things will start to happen. Squash any drama quickly because it can poison a clan. Good luck.

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Why suggest workarounds which create the same balance issues you guys don't like? It wouldn't ruin clan wars and the fun in clan wars, it would ruin a players ability to be a crappy member of a clan war and benefit from that. Members should have to do the same work everyone else in the clan does to get better and improve, but, we also should be able to give them the time necessary to do that without using workarounds you suggest that aren't better in any way.

I agree with items 1-3. Right now the only thing one can do if he/she cannot participate in a war is to leave the clan then join back. Come on SuperCell, please add individual option to opt-out of the war. On item 4 though, I think 1 week is too long. I have friends that join our clan just for war.

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Originally Posted by Smec

I agree with items 1-3. Right now the only thing one can do if he/she cannot participate in a war is to leave the clan then join back. Come on SuperCell, please add individual option to opt-out of the war. On item 4 though, I think 1 week is too long. I have friends that join our clan just for war.

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I think this is definitely a legitimate concern. However, if supercell gives people the ability to opt out and choose who wars, will they have any reason to leave? You could war more often with those who want to do it all the time, and those who don't can opt out. No reason to join a new clan for war in that situation.

The reason I think a week is important, is because its long enough to make people think twice about leaving, clan hopping, or joining a clan they have no intention of staying in just to war.

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Originally Posted by Santrega

I don't believe anyone has posted actual instances where clan wars have harmed their clan. It has, many times. Just have to dig a little harder because most people don't put the effort into their posts that you do.

we shouldn't have to worry about 5 new members and whether or not they'll actually do what they are supposed to do in the war. Yes you should. If they don't want to follow the clan rules they should be booted, regardless of what they are. War participation, mandatory donations, no swearing . . . follow the clan format or find a different clan. SC should not have to program donation filters, swearing filters, participation filters or anything else to enforce clan rules that should be enforced by the leadership.

I should be able to do both, but we can't part time do one, and we can't not war. Sure you can. You just have players that are unwilling to budge one way or the other. You can EASILY war one week and not the next. You just have to find players that are happy with that. Then you will loose players who want one or the other. You will never make all of any group of people happy and no button will ever fix that.

It's not poorly balanced if my top 20 face your top 20. Your top 20 would be matched up against their bottom 20, all of which are being fed maxed out DE troops and such to ensure their bottom 20 walk all over you.

This really doesn't seem like a logical thought. If you are better with 30, go with 30, if you are better with 20, go with 20. Every clan would make the choice and balance it themselves accordingly. Again, clans dedicated to winning will send in their WEAKEST 20 or 30 to face you with troops far more powerful than they can create themselves. Of course this is currently already possible but minimized by the fact that it is very time consuming and difficult coordinate the drop and rejoin that many players at a time. Making it quick and easy guarantees misuse.

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All of this ignores the term "Clan War". I realize this is a game so I am back to more an opinion/philosophy because it is only as attached to reality as we make it but . . . Clan . . . War. Implying the entire clan, and you don't have a choice. If you are being attacked in a war you can either curl up and die, or fight back. You don't get to tell the attacking army, "TIME OUT!!! You don't get to touch me because I don't want to be involved in this." All you can do is decide to take it lying down or fight back. You can refuse to fight and still get killed and potentially punished for desertion. But you are in the war. In this case, the war the rest of your clan is in. If they change the system they really should change what it is called too.

TLDR

But I got the gist of it. Clans are a delicate system. We've had 1 mass exodus once, we lost about 15 people. Good people too. They all left and joined a new clan, or made their own, I don't remember. It was so long ago. But most in that group had mass exodus'ed into our clan too. Eventually a lot of them came back!

Since Clan War, we had purposely dwindled our numbers as we cleaned house to those that were active in war. We don't war often, but when we do, we want max participation. We've recently received several amazing people into our clan who joined through a mass exodus from their previous clan.

Mass Exoduses happens. It's hard to prevent and sometimes even the best clan will fall victim to it.

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Originally Posted by AxionXD

TLDR

But I got the gist of it. Clans are a delicate system. We've had 1 mass exodus once, we lost about 15 people. Good people too. They all left and joined a new clan, or made their own, I don't remember. It was so long ago. But most in that group had mass exodus'ed into our clan too. Eventually a lot of them came back!

Since Clan War, we had purposely dwindled our numbers as we cleaned house to those that were active in war. We don't war often, but when we do, we want max participation. We've recently received several amazing people into our clan who joined through a mass exodus from their previous clan.

Mass Exoduses happens. It's hard to prevent and sometimes even the best clan will fall victim to it.

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Exactly. It is usually disappointing but it is part of social interaction on any level. Trying to prevent friends/acquaintances from leaving your life/clan/whatever is as unhealthy as trying to force people into it. If the mix isn't good let it change or it will stay bad and get worse.