CHEAP SHIELDING: How does it work? Sign Up to STOP IT!

[SuperSteve[Supercell]]

Apologies on the copy and paste job but here's what we had to say on Reddit:

n regards to Chting - let's split it into two questions:

What are you doing about chting?

It has been, and will continue to be, an ongoing effort to discover and address the ways in which certain players can exploit gameplay and platform mechanics to gain an unfair advantage over other players. We've already put out several changes to the game such as adding (and tightening) the personal break restriction, tweaking revenge to have equal precedence as normal matchmaking, and adding several other changes under the hood to make things like assisted-touch and offline attacking more difficult. Our main approach has been, and will continue to be, to fix and improve what features of the game people are routinely abusing to gain unfair advantage. Rather than constantly policing the leaderboards and using banhammers to try to enforce fair play (which would be a huge distraction for the team to do at the level of consistency, accuracy and fairness we would expect), we'd rather just do our best to remove the options for exploitation in the first place.
We realize that there will always be players who come up with new tricks and ways to game the system, and that is a frustration we share along with the vast majority of players who Clash fairly. We feel very strongly that high-level gameplay should be as fair as possible and, to be perfectly honest, this isn't our favorite area to spend our limited focus on. Having such a small development team, we'd much rather be spending the time working on new features, troops, clan functionality and other things. When some new exploitative behavior does come up, though, we do our best to fix it as quickly as we can.

What are you doing about the difficulties of matchmaking in high level gameplay?

As a fun fact, less than .02% of daily active Clash players are in the Champion league. So, along with trying to make sure that people play fair, it is a challenge to try to keep high-level gameplay as active as possible. This is a major reason why, for example, we removed the week-long shield from Champion league and have been tightening the personal break limits. With so few top players who are so eager for each and every fight they can get, there often simply aren't enough attackable targets to satisfy the demand. We feel that, when you are at the top of the heap in Clash, you should have to constantly battle with the other top players to retain your top position. However, it is also only fair to give players time to recover after a defeat, and keeping these needs in balance with the most competitive and dedicated of players is challenging, to say the least.
Another other part of the issue, to be very frank, is simply that the trophy differences in the Champion league have become more extreme than they ever have been before. Remember the days when the global #1 player had "only" 4000 trophies? Now the top 90 players have at least 4000 trophies, and the global maximum is climbing ever-higher, making the Champion league span from 3200 to 4500 trophies. Given the way matchmaking ELO systems should work, matches between players with such wide-ranging score differences should be seldom, at best, but this leaves problems with people at the highest levels finding any matches at all. This issue only compounds itself when players are maximizing online time and shield time to stay out of matchmaking as much as possible, and will only get worse as the Champion league stretches thinner and thinner from end to end.
Unfortunately, there isn't a quick and dirty answer that will actually fundamentally fix this difficulty in high-level matchmaking, though we are well aware of the problem and discuss it fairly frequently. Ultimately, it may not be incessant tweaking of high-level matchmaking that fixes this issue, but instead providing new features and goals to keep top players engaged, rather than the endless grinding for +1 trophy at a time.

[thisismine]

Apologies on the copy and paste job but here's what we had to say on Reddit:

n regards to ♥♥♥♥♥ing - let's split it into two questions:

What are you doing about ♥♥♥♥♥ing?

It has been, and will continue to be, an ongoing effort to discover and address the ways in which certain players can exploit gameplay and platform mechanics to gain an unfair advantage over other players. We've already put out several changes to the game such as adding (and tightening) the personal break restriction, tweaking revenge to have equal precedence as normal matchmaking, and adding several other changes under the hood to make things like assisted-touch and offline attacking more difficult. Our main approach has been, and will continue to be, to fix and improve what features of the game people are routinely abusing to gain unfair advantage. Rather than constantly policing the leaderboards and using banhammers to try to enforce fair play (which would be a huge distraction for the team to do at the level of consistency, accuracy and fairness we would expect), we'd rather just do our best to remove the options for exploitation in the first place.
We realize that there will always be players who come up with new tricks and ways to game the system, and that is a frustration we share along with the vast majority of players who Clash fairly. We feel very strongly that high-level gameplay should be as fair as possible and, to be perfectly honest, this isn't our favorite area to spend our limited focus on. Having such a small development team, we'd much rather be spending the time working on new features, troops, clan functionality and other things. When some new exploitative behavior does come up, though, we do our best to fix it as quickly as we can.

What are you doing about the difficulties of matchmaking in high level gameplay?

As a fun fact, less than .02% of daily active Clash players are in the Champion league. So, along with trying to make sure that people play fair, it is a challenge to try to keep high-level gameplay as active as possible. This is a major reason why, for example, we removed the week-long shield from Champion league and have been tightening the personal break limits. With so few top players who are so eager for each and every fight they can get, there often simply aren't enough attackable targets to satisfy the demand. We feel that, when you are at the top of the heap in Clash, you should have to constantly battle with the other top players to retain your top position. However, it is also only fair to give players time to recover after a defeat, and keeping these needs in balance with the most competitive and dedicated of players is challenging, to say the least.
Another other part of the issue, to be very frank, is simply that the trophy differences in the Champion league have become more extreme than they ever have been before. Remember the days when the global #1 player had "only" 4000 trophies? Now the top 90 players have at least 4000 trophies, and the global maximum is climbing ever-higher, making the Champion league span from 3200 to 4500 trophies. Given the way matchmaking ELO systems should work, matches between players with such wide-ranging score differences should be seldom, at best, but this leaves problems with people at the highest levels finding any matches at all. This issue only compounds itself when players are maximizing online time and shield time to stay out of matchmaking as much as possible, and will only get worse as the Champion league stretches thinner and thinner from end to end.
Unfortunately, there isn't a quick and dirty answer that will actually fundamentally fix this difficulty in high-level matchmaking, though we are well aware of the problem and discuss it fairly frequently. Ultimately, it may not be incessant tweaking of high-level matchmaking that fixes this issue, but instead providing new features and goals to keep top players engaged, rather than the endless grinding for +1 trophy at a time.

Thank you for your answer!
Does SC consider cheap shielding ♥♥♥♥♥ing?

[Ma77hew]

Thank you for your answer!
Does SC consider cheap shielding ♥♥♥♥♥ing?

Still dont understand why you care.

[slikk]

Lemme put another situation to you Stitch...

...supposing I am @ 49% with no more troops, 1 min left on the timer
(and we know that happens to the best of us)
and I send my nice L21 Queen out to take that last 1%
(and I always aim for only 50%)

should I then be punished by having her die even though I have already gotten my 50%?!

I find it interesting how you quoted the post above and below my post, yet ignore my response which addresses exactly the scenario you pose to us. I assume from this that you are unhappy with both the initial suggestion and my alternative?

[kylengllu]

Thank you for your answer!
Does SC consider cheap shielding ♥♥♥♥♥ing?

Does SC consider exposed th as ♥♥♥♥♥ing? Because if I remember correctly, the tutorial told me to protect my th because its the most important building and am sure it wasn't their intentions for farmers to get a cheap shield from this.

[Loraxdooper]

Dear Jess7286, I'm not hating anyone here. I'm hating an attitude, a bad practice. So if you are saying I'm an hater, yes I'm an hater of cheap shielding.
I'm not saying everyone who offer cheap shields are bad guys. I'm saying cheap shielding someone is wrong, so stop doing it. I think the worst thing of cheap shielding is that if everyone do it you are supposed/constrained to do it!

So yes, you are right! I'm a cheap shielding practice hater, and i gonna hate cheap shields.
What about you?

Like it affect you in any way. Don't honestly know why you start such a thread. In your title you ask "how does it work?", then before even knowing how it works, you ask people to sign up to stop it.

Haters gonna hate.

[thisismine]

Like it affect you in any way. Don't honestly know why you start such a thread. In your title you ask "how does it work?", then before even knowing how it works, you ask people to sign up to stop it.

Haters gonna hate.

If you read my thread, I'm asking how do the top players reward the friends that give them the cheap shields. And I'm saying that if I could interview a top player I would ask him how he could find such kind clanmates that hepl him loosing voluntarily trophies.

[Loraxdooper]

If you read my thread, I'm asking how do the top players reward the friends that give them the cheap shields. And I'm saying that if I could interview a top player I would ask him how he could find such kind clanmates that hepl him loosing voluntarily trophies.

Get to know the difference between free shields and cheap shields first buddy
And I'm sure once you make it to champion you will totally talk differently
Also I wouldn't blame it on the players, blame it on SC

[dragonhealers]

Supercell should just totally remove shields and allow attacks on villages even if the owner is online in the Champion League. And all these problems of cheap shielding and use of third party software to be "always online" will be solved.

Dang, girl! You got some NERVE to be suggesting that stuff around here.

[An4114]

All this just really makes me feel like there is not much point to the game in the end,yes I will still play but it's just a downer knowing an average player that does not spend thousands of dollars on this game,have friends in high places,or use tricks to keep them online has not much of a chance to reach top 200. I really wish this app could be bought for a certain amount and there was no such things as gems,I remember games that being top player actually meant u deserve to be there because of skill alone,with this game all the top blokes are basically on steroids,they are not playing fair..