Dear SuperCell,
Longtime forum lurker, first time poster here.
First, thanks for creating a wonderfully fun, interesting, and perhaps above all, addictive game.
Second, my wife thanks you for this past (shield) update, since I'm no longer motivated to raid more than once every 2 hours...
A bit of background about me. I started clashing over 3 years ago, back when TH8 was max, and no player had reached 3000 trophies yet. I've since progressed to become a co-leader at one of the top farming clans in the world. I maxed out my heroes earlier this year, and maxed my walls just this month. I've used gems to complete my TH11 construction, and have started building lots of new stuff, which is great, but I really miss being able to raid with an army that is quick (and relatively cheap) to train.
I think I understand the motivation behind changing the shield system; it's much more interesting to see people test their defenses and offenses than to see TH snipe after TH snipe. However, that really should only apply to the players who are pushing. Here's how I estimate the breakdown of current Clashers:
.1% - Whales. These people gem their bases to the max as soon as the update hits. You probably receive more than 50% of your revenue from them.
.5% - Hardcore pushers. These people regularly spend gems to boost their barracks, or to buy shields so that they can climb the ranks as high as possible, but they're not willing to gem everything immediately.
1% - Hardcore farmers. These people (among whom I place myself) play every day, raiding 10-50 times per day. Some of them boost regularly, but many do not (I myself do not).
30% - Casual farmers. These people play every day, but only raid maybe 2-5 times per day. They don't buy gems, but their bases improve steadily, because they can rely on their usually TH being sniped, and not losing more than 1000 gold and 1000 elixir.
68.4% - Casual players. Some play just to war; these players attack in multiplayer less than once per day. These players improve extremely slowly.
How does the update affect these 5 groups?
Whales - This update is awesome for whales. They are accustomed to getting smashed on defense, and accustomed to training and using slow, expensive armies for every attack. The fact that they can rely on village guard to prevent being attacked while they retrain another army is great. Also, they can count on more and better trophy offers in Titan and Legend.
Hardcore pushers - This update is also nice for pushers, for the same reasons as for whales.
Hardcore farmers - This update was pretty bad for farmers. Farmers relied on cheap shields to protect their loot while they retrain a quick and cheap army to steal more loot. Farmers are typically in much lower leagues, anywhere from Silver to Master. Now that shields are much more expensive in terms of loot, farmers may lose as much as they gain every time they're attacked.
Casual farmers - This update ruined casual farmers. Not only are they no longer progressing, they may actually be regressing; getting looted for more than they're making from their raids/collectors every day.
Casual players - This update probably didn't affect these players much, since they were barely progressing before anyway. Now, however, they're certainly completely stalled.
So, in my admittedly rough estimation, the shield changes have benefited less than 1% of the player base, and hurt the other 99+%.
My suggestion is simple: allow the TH to grant a 12 hour shield again, perhaps only in Masters and below.
Shields will still be much more costly than before the update; since the TH stores more than 1000 gold and 1000 elixir now. However, I'm certain that the vast majority of farmers would rather lose a 20% of their available loot, rather than be subjected to an all-out attack which steals 2-5 times as much loot.
This change will also mean lower leagues may be able to sustain farmers looking for dead bases by sniping for loot. As it is now, I recently spent 350k looking for an easy base to attack in Crystal, eventually settling for 150k/150k...which was a net negative when factoring in search cost and army cost.
I really like raiding in Clash, but I'm not willing to raid at a loss. So, I've changed over to using a war appropriate army, which takes exactly 1 hour 50 minutes to train fully (which also allows my heroes to heal fully). I've also taken to moving up in leagues, to take advantage of the larger bonus, though getting 70% to reap the full benefit of the bonus is often challenging. So I've gone from being able to raid 2-3 times an hour (pre-update) to raiding once every 2 hours...and that has really detracted from my enjoyment of Clash. The thrill of finding a dead base, or a severely under-developed one is gone, since it's no longer economical to look for them. Instead, I search for about 2 minutes, and go all out for 3 minutes, and queue up my army again in 1 minute. So I play about 6 minutes every 2 hours, instead of constantly being on, looking for targets, chatting with clan members, etc.
Again, to end on a high note, thanks for creating a great game, and I'm hopeful that you will make whatever changes are necessary to re-engage the disgruntled players.
Cheers.
