Changes are a coming...I'd like to see valid SC input on this problem I pose
I posted this earlier today in a thread, started a new thread where I separated it, but I guess due to cross posting the second was deleted/moved. I have now deleted the original, because I wanted this one to stand alone. I have since watched/listened to the Chief Pat interview, but my opinion remains largely unchanged because there appears that nothing has been done to address the crater of lost loot due to the 80% sniping statistic. Yes, it is a staggering statistic that I personally find hard to believe perhaps because I just never really used this method, but I still think the original post has valid points and a valid example that I would like to hear opinion on...
I started a message in one thread, but it evolved into something else. It was out of place in that thread, and I thought it deserved it's own thread altogether. Please note, I am not whining, but using a very real life, this-really-happened-and-still-is scenario. Granted, the poker industry is still around today, but the numbers are WAY off of where they were five years ago. That's the kind of thing that happens when an industry that has one demographic (in this case the "demographic" is the entirety of the USA) constituting a full 25% of the customer base removed from the available customer base and no influx of new customers to replace the departed. I'm not an economics major, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn last night...and I see this scenario being a very real possibility that perhaps the chief eggheads at SC didn't take into account. Enjoy:
Some people are viciously defending the update, most are not, and we have heard from the everyday Joe's in silver and gold right up to the Titan league. This update, no matter what SC says, is not about improving the economy of the game or the playability of the game or even making things "fair" - it's about lining their pockets with more money. Plain and simple. I believe if they, SC, really cared they would have openly and immediately addressed the whole bunny situation. Hell, we even have to talk about the bunnies in code because they would consistently redact and delete posts that directly addressed it. I understand that they are a business who's eventual goal is to make money. As much as they can - but at what cost to the customer experience? We are the customers, and no matter how much we enjoy being here and playing, socializing with fellow clashers, if you screw with the system too much and make it unbearable to continue to exist here, we will find greener pastures. As it is your right to make money, it is our right to take our money and time elsewhere when we feel marginalized and as if our actual game experience is not even close to as important as your bottom line. I applaud you for putting a lot of thought into a supremely convoluted system that involves more variables than your average player is willing to deal with.
This game, and it's economy, are similar to the poker economy. Allow me to explain. You have people like myself who can and have made a consistent living simply by playing a card game. It is the hardest way to make an easy living. However, without the "fish", the ecosystem collapses because only the sharks are feeding off of one another, and the house still needs to get it's piece of the pie. Without new blood, new cash infusion to stay ahead of the rake, the money would eventually dwindle to zero as either the Sharks get out of the pool, or the house eventually takes all the money via the rake. When the Feds cracked down on Internet poker in the U.S. in 2011 (known as Black Friday by those of us who play), it caused a massive ripple in the poker economy. I largely got out of the game as it is not convienient for me to drive an hour to the closest brick and mortar joint, and took my winnings with me. There was no longer a steady stream of newbies and fish to pump money into the economy. The dwindling numbers and prize monies available at some of the biggest Poker tournaments around are a testament to this. The Feds wanted their cut, and instead they have nothing, and they screwed countless others in the process. This example is not hard to research.This is going to happen to CoC...
Why do I surmise this to be the case? Because they have proposed a set of rules that new people are not going to understand, and these rules have made it difficult to grow, certainly more so than it was in the past. Surely, at first they may not notice the difficulty due to the cheap costs of their upgrades - that's if they decide to continue to play within this new system of rules that even Moderators supposedly more knowledgable than us don't quite know or understand. By alienating new customers, the game will die. We're not all going to play CoC until the day we die. Eventually people move on. You need a continous stream of new players to replace the old ones that leave, and now this update represents a major roadblock that threatens to cut off that influx of new players. You may not notice it at first, nobody will. The same was true in the example given above. It took a couple of months, but once the decline started, it just kept rolling along. It now seems to be leveling off or at least slowed the bleeding, perhaps in part to the fact that some states have now legalized online poker. But until it is legal at the Federal level, it will never see the numbers that it once did.
I could go on and on comparing these two apples and oranges, but the point has been made. There is a likely chance that I won't be around to say "I told you so", because frankly when I game I do it to relax and have fun. I play at my leisure, when I want and when my life allows me to. I'm 40, not 14, and like many players I have responsibilities and a job, kids. What I don't need is for a game I enjoy to feel like a job where I now have to follow rules and watch my time, where it seems I have to consult a soothsayer and take into account the phases of the moon to decide if I should attack, how many troops I need to deploy, and eventually bang my head against the wall as I get nowhere fast due to troop costs needed to get what I want from a raid - that's IF I get it. Massive failures, which happens to all of us from time to time, will no longer be as easy to recover from, let alone the fact that we can now expect to regularly get turned into a parking lot each and every time the game kicks us off. A game that was once fun - tedious at times but still fun - appears to be heading down the road of insufferable, unless I want to spend money each and every session and sit with a timer, forgo sitting online and chatting with my clan mates, etc.
That's another aspect of the game you don't seem to understand - the social impact. That's been said in other posts. For some it more important than the game itself, and now your update threatens that as well. I could be wrong on some of these points, but I'm a fairly intelligent person and I've been around the block once or twice. Perhaps the end goal is to chase the "casual" players away. It's no fun being king of the hill if no one is around to notice...and players up and down the spectrum have said their piece about the impact this is going to have. I haven't been one to whine about other updates in the past, I have adapted, and I'm not whining now. I'm waving the white flag because I don't see me surviving or tolerating these restrictions and thinly disguised rules about overall game health that really are about pulling more money from us. Good game, SC. It was fun while it lasted...
