Hello forum community,
I wanted to come to the forums today in an effort to promote two ideas that I recently talked about on a Clash of Clans podcast, Saturday Night Hive with Tait from OneHive. For those of you that are interested in listening to the episode, you can find the podcast here on SNH episode 53. The ideas that I am talking about can be heard from 27:30 - 30:42 of the podcast and I will also be outlining the both below in an effort to gain some momentum from these ideas.
Why I Am Writing This Now, Thoughts on Current State of Clash of Clans: For several years many players in the war community advocated hard for an 'arranged war' system to be put into the game. After several months of an unsuccessful effort, players began to leave the game. The community continued to advocate for the system to be put into place but I grew concerned at this consistent pressure. I grew concerned because many players in the war community had found ways to match up on a pretty consistent basis with clans they wanted to war. Leadership in many high level war clans made sure to hit the search button at the same time with a clan that was running similar lineups. For over two years players continued to push for this feature but I slowly began to back away. Why? Because it didn't add anything fundamentally new to the game. It didn't change the way we played the game; it just removed the variance of sometimes not matching the clan you wanted to match. Even now with the friendly war feature as a part of the game, I can't help but notice a small lack of excitement I had hoped would come back to the game. Don't get me wrong, players still enjoy playing the game. However, I can't help but sense that some players are starting to feel the same way I did a year ago. Sort of a "now what" aspect as they continue to progress (or in some cases stop progressing all together, re: "career" TH9s). Because I am beginning to sense this "now what" in the community, I thought now would be the perfect time to present two ideas. If this thread is able to catch some momentum, perhaps someone from SC will see it.
(1) New Game Mode, Borrowing From Boom Beach: It is no secret that many concepts from the last year in Clash of Clans have come directly from Clash Royale. Concepts such as the miner, the clone/skeleton spells, and the bomb tower have made waves in Clash of Clans. Some more than others (cough the clone spell is still not great cough). Given that Supercell has borrowed concepts from one game, Clash Royale, it would make sense that they may be able to borrow from other games such as Boom Beach. For those who are not aware, Boom Beach has "task forces" in the same way that Clash of Clans has "clans". However, rather than participate in clan wars, Boom Beach has more of a co-op feature where your task force attempts to dismantle a giant mega-base over the course of a day. To put it into Clash of Clans terms (and promote the idea), pretend that your clan has 50 TH11s. Now picture a mega-base with 40 Eagles, 75 Inferno Towers, and 200 Archer Towers. Throw 100 bombs in there as well... just because. And also picture a massive Town Hall in the back of the map. One person cannot defeat this base. However, 50 players all working together can begin to slowly dismantle it. This game mode, which ideally is easier to integrate given that they have the necessary server space and a skeleton code from Boom Beach, would be a great addition to the game to work alongside the clan war system which still leaves players wondering what to do during that 23 hour preparation day. Furthermore, in order to participate in these task force missions, players need to collect "intel" which are essentially special items your teammates collect while farming. Adding this into Clash of Clans would boost activity in the farming aspect of the game and well as give players a completely new way of looking at the game. Taking it a step further, if SC wanted to keep Clash of Clans more the "Versus" style of game and moving away from Boom Beach... how about matching up two clans based on similar OFFENSIVE strength and then giving the clans a 23 hour preparation day to build their OWN mega-base? How cool would it be to match up with a similar clan and be given 20 Eagles, 100 Infernos, 200 AT's, 200 Cannons, and 75 Bombs (exaggerated numbers) and then as a TEAM you have to build the mega-base? That'd be a cool feature too.
(2) Town Hall Badges as Reward for Completing Town Hall Level: The second idea is one that doesn't necessarily give players a new game mode as much as it let's players advance in gameplay while still being able to choose how they want to play the game during clan wars. It would work something like this... On the top of your player profile, next to your player tag, you would have pictures of TH's 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. Every time you 'maxed' (e.g., completed upgrading everything for a particular town hall level - defenses, troops, walls) you would be given a TH badge for that level. What this badge would allow you to do is participate in war as a maxed version of that TH level. For example, let's say you are a 100% maxed TH11. You would have badges for TH's 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11. If you wanted to war as a TH11 - no need to do anything. But let's say SC releases an update that, I don't know, makes it so that hog riders no longer take 1.5 damage from giant bombs. You think to yourself, "Oh man! I think that will make hog riders extremely powerful at TH9." With this new feature, since you would have the TH9 badge, you could 'activate' the badge (think turning it green sort of like you do with the opt-in / opt-out feature) and war as a TH9. This rewards you for putting in the time and effort to make progress in the game and lets you experience the game how you want to experience it.
Let's look a little deeper at some of the pro's and con's I see from adding this feature from the perspective of multiple sides of the community. On the pro's side, I think this does a couple of things. The biggest positive from this change would be that players would have the freedom to explore higher town hall levels without having to give up the safety of the Town Hall they know. As many are aware, 'career' Town Halls are becoming a bigger and bigger issue in the game. For those who do not know what a 'career' Town Hall is - essentially it means that a player makes a conscious decision NOT to upgrade to a higher town hall once they have completely maxed a particular town hall level. It tends to occur at TH9 the most and for three reasons: (a) the farming grind at TH10 seems daunting, (b) they are comfortable warring at TH9 and believe it to be the best balance in the game, and (c) upgrading would mean sitting out of war for a prolonged period of time. Career TH's pose a huge threat to SC's game and I think they know this. When a massive group of players decide not to make the push, it increases pressure for more content because players get bored faster than they would if they were progressing in the game the way SC intended. On top of this, players who max their TH have no reason to spend money. So it's a double whammy for SC. Players are getting bored, demanding more stuff, and they aren't paying for anything. Yikes! This solution fixes this problem. As soon as a player finishes a TH level, they have ZERO reason not to go to the next TH level as they have safety in the badge they have earned. This will promote progression AND the ability to challenge yourself at a higher TH level. The friendly challenge feature makes this possible. Indeed, someone can war as a TH9 with the player badge activated but if someone throws up a friendly challenge, they can experiment at the TH level they are at without fear. So, long story coming to a close - this promotes growth.
The one downside to this idea is how SC would handle updates. Obviously if SC releases content for TH7 in an update, everyone would lose their badge. This is the one workaround I see needing to be resolved but there are a couple of easy fixes. Players could be given a cooldown of sorts for their badge. For example, if a new defenses is released at TH9 and it takes 24 days to take to max level, perhaps when SC releases the update they give players who have the TH9 badge a free 24 days to continue to use the badge. Something like that.
So those are the ideas. The goal for this post is to gain momentum for the ideas. The longer the ideas stay in the public eye and at the top of the forum page, the better chance we have of the right eyeballs looking at them and tossing them around in Helsinki. I hope you enjoyed the ideas and feel free to give some constructive comments in the posts below to (a) make the ideas better or (b) promote new game modes you have thought of. Thanks!
- Kayeffsea
Originally Posted by N1NJ4W4RR10R
cheers buddy and thanks for all you do!
