Been playing 5 days and something disturbs me greatly

[Crunkstation]

At the end of the day supercell is a business.
My issue is that Personally I have no idea what i will do when my base is eventually maxed (a long way away). Once you have farmed everything investing a large amount of time in the process, what the hell are you supposed to do? Go on a permanent push with the big spenders with no chance of competing with them? Ill probably get bored within a week or two. But hopefully the game will have evolved with more features by the time I eventually get there.

[NETRUN]

I
If the company doesn't change its policy soon I'm almost tempted to ask a few friends of mine or my step mother whom are lawyers to see if their is anyway to clarify this game as being a ponzi scheme that is accessible by children

♥♥♥♥. Thanks for a huge laugh, buddy!

Net

[Ytiev]

I'm someone who in the past has played games like starcraft/AOE/LoL/WoW/runescape, you name it I played it. Not only did I play them but I was always top 5% except in runescape of course because that game didn't have any competitive aspects. Now some of my cousins introduced me to clash of clans a few days ago and I was blown away at how fun and satisfying it is. I thought to myself "this is what age of empires online wanted to be except this is way more accessible. I bought a few builders homes because it was pretty obvious this was the only real investment i could justify making without ruining my gameplay experience. I got excited when after an hour i could build archers, then after a day I could train wizards. I constantly fought to get gold to upgrade my walls to all dark iron or w\e and one little gold wall in front of my wizard tower. So naturally I went to look up youtube videos of CoC gameplay to see if there were any viable strategies where people just mass trained wizard. This is where i saw something very dark and almost disgusting.

I watched a video where a guy spent hundreds of dollars in a matter of minutes training troops and making spells. Upgrading everything in a matter of an hour while spending thousands. On the forums top players posting that you either pay or you won't be competitive. At first i thought "surely there must be a daily limit you can spend on this game", then when i found out that there was no limit I began to realize the game was one giant scheme for the people who buy gems constantly. When you buy gems to upgrade something there is always something else to spend cash on. Their is no end to it. I felt sick looking at what i was watching. Not because I was "jealous", but because i had never seen people throw away the chance to upgrade over time with buddies and try getting the top 5 spots or so in your clan just for fun. It was something much darker i was witnessing. I checked the timeline for CoC and i realized its relatively new so I think the company has a chance to fix this issue by putting a harsh cap on the amount of cash people can spend on the game per month.This will increase the longevity of the game, attract people looking for a legit AOE style moba without scaring them away, and help a lot of people who have put on different forums that the game ruined their lives because they spent so much cash only to realize that there was no end to it. Sure i could spend 200-300 dollars a week buying gems, but what am I gaining except skipping out on the satisfaction you get from leveling stuff up like in most games.

If the company doesn't change its policy soon I'm almost tempted to ask a few friends of mine or my step mother whom are lawyers to see if their is anyway to clarify this game as being a ponzi scheme that is accessible by children. Just because the game tells these poor souls over spending that "pay money and you can skip the most satisfying part of the game only to realize that you will never stop paying because we have you addicted", when it's also "pay money to get to a point that you think is the finish line, only to realize you can only stay there if you keep giving us your money, but instead of 500 gems its now 2000 gems, and now its 5000 gems". This is the very definition of a ponzi scheme.
I know it seems silly to write this after 5 days but when i play a game i like to watch youtube vids/read the forums/the reddit. The rate at which i was always to find out how dark this game was for a lot of people and very quickly.

Edit: The reason I say this is a ponzi scheme is because their is always a higher prices to be payed around the corner. They get you to spend 600 gems so your town hall can upgrade, then the next time its 900, the next time its 1500 ect ect. Except apply this to everything in the game. It's the idea of "just one more investment and you can get to the next level only to realize there is a level beyond and then you realize you wasted all your money because their is no end and your paycheck is gone. This is what ponzi schemers do to their victims. They take their money and say we will double it, then they double it and ask for more, eventually they run off with your money and call it a day.

Edit#2: I know I can enjoy the game without paying (This is the same rhetoric you hear from a lot of pay to win games). Im simply stating some worries I have about the games ethical values. When you have the option to push a button that will drink your bank account while furthering your account with no effort and the price gets higher and higher every time you do....it just seems very wrong (for those people who can't control themselves, for the kids who steal their parents credit cards, for the gambling addicts, for the regular kid who saved up for a bit and figured he could spare a few only to empty his saving in a few weeks). I'm not these people but this just seems unethical.

1: Talking about non-SC games is against forum rules
2: By downloading the game you agreed to SC's ToS, so by agreeing you have said that you are liable for any thing you buy (And by agreeing to the ToS I assume you have read SC's company policies?)
3: It is possible to get a maxed out base without paying money with enough time and patience

[dossier]

Sounds like to me you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥ bc being in the top5% is impossible with playing for like a year or more. With that said, I wish there was a cap to the amount of gems you could get/time.

[peterson23]

Here are really nice and interesting post. I am totally agree with you and would like to say thanks to you that you share this post here with us. I also believe that online business is best and profitable business. Thanks once again.

[addme12345]

you want SC to tell their players not to spend too much money on their game ??? good luck with that lol

[MattCoC]

I also play AoE and have for years. I think you can cruise around and play this game without gems. You will never be top 200 but you could make champions league eventually. For a free game, it is pretty enjoyable. Some people gem and put stuff on YouTube, but they also have advertisements on their youtube videos. So maybe they make some money off their videos. It costs about $14,000 to gem to a maxed base, so these people are either addicts, super rich, or sponsored super rich addicts. Ponzi schemes are different in that they don't have goblins.

Check out clash with cam on YouTube. He is doing a series where he only uses the gems that he farms from trees and bushes. He is moving up in champions only using BARCH and lightning spells.

[Coathanger]

This post greatly disturbs me. Its purely about how a player buys pixels from SC and that is somehow amoral behavior on SCs part. SC created a product you can either advance with using time or money. Your participation is not required, people blow billions every year on pixels they can't even posses, it's called a movie theater.

Yeah there are plenty of people who either can't help themselves and spend the money or those that just DGAF. No one is required to participate. Your faults are not SCs responsibility to account for.

Would you call a contractor who builds houses a scam artist because he offers a faster time frame to complete for more money?

[Zarnikon]

I thougth a decent post till i got to the part about a ponzi scheme and just stopped reading, you clearly have no idea what a ponzi scheme is and are trying to look smart. Here's the core of a ponzi scheme: You promise very high return to investors, you keep on getting new investors because of the high return on investment but instead of your company actually making any money you're just using the money from the new investors to pay the older investors untill the guy usually bails with all the money.

What supercell is doing is not in any way illegal, it's a very simple system, you make an addictive game that starts out with quick progress to get the player hooked, the longer he's playing and hence more dedicated the longer everything becomes, making the game more frustrating but because the player has already invested so much time in it they usually keep playing. But there is a way to solve this frustration, with gems, you buy and you get instant progress again. And the maker of the game collects the money from the people that want to buy their way to the top

[Beagle21]

For supercell the freemium game is a great business model, they did not pioneer it nor will they be the last to use it. The truth is that when you have as many people involved as this there are going to be some downsides. People are not always capable of making the best decisions and may put themselves in difficult financial straights for a game / gambling / hobby or myriad of other things.

Most people play the game responsibly and do not spend more than they can afford. Now some people could spend many thousands on this game and it would just be a drop in the bucket, while others can't spare enough for the extra builders. Everyone has a different financial situation and winning the ovarian lottery has a lot to do with it.

As with any competition especially one like this with such a huge number of players that want to be on the leaderboard, people will go to great lengths to get there. There is only 200 spots so if you are not willing to make it a priority and invest great amounts of money or time you will not get the reward.

TLDR; supercell does not need to be our mom