Why are inactive bases blocked from getting attacked?

[Gama321]

I had three inactive accounts that I had not played in almost 49 days. Two of them had been attacked within the last 12 hours. Those defense logs had attacks every day against it. The third account had not been attacked in twelve days.

Like others have said, SC doesnt block these bases. They simply fall out of favor. People could make it far enough down the queue to see them and accidentally skip them and the base then just gets pushed farther down.

Finally, people talk a lot about inactive bases. A max collector takes 57 hours to be completely full. I rarely see these. I quite often see collectors that are half of that and it is still very juicy. So when most people say inactive they are talking about people who havent come online in a day, give or take a few hours. I constantly see people in clans and on global who do not play every single day. So when I see people talk about "the point wasnt to let barchers attack inactive bases", I cringe. Barchers are mostly getting bases in which the owner has been offline for 8-18 hours. If someone plays every night from 9-12, then by the time they get sniped and their base opens up 12 hours later it is a pretty juicy base but not inactive.

You say they are inactive but did you log on to them to check said defence logs? Because that would mean they aren't inactive

[SharkyFinn]

That's not the meaning of inflation. Prices would stay the same despite the amount of resources in the economy. So no inflation.

I believe he's referring to stat inflation - where player stats rise at an increased pace due to a steady stream of resources from inactive players.

[Smalls]

My thoughts are that you should have use the search function... This topic has been done to death.

As has been said above the idea of the game is to attack active players - not barch inactive collectors.

Inactive players arent blocked ... They are moved to the back of the queue. They are important for the economy - I agree there. And it is always nice to come across an inactive.

I personally saw plenty of inactives in the gold leagues. Unfortunately most of these come with low leveled collectors and is not profitable to collect them. Added to that many of the higher TH's will have their collectors barched sometimes leaving them without a shield - their collectors become empty.

I also suspect that many of the inactive basis are low TH levels. If these were left in people could be nexting for eternity in some leagues to get to any base with loot.

The idea that the game is based on attacking active players is completely ridiculous. First of all, they designed the game so you have to be offline (in other words - inactive) in order to be attacked. If they wanted true PVP why would they make the game like that?

Reason number 2. An active player uses WAY more resources than they can ever hope to produce from our mines. If all of the inactives were removed and all that was left was active players collecting from their mines then the entire game economy would completely crash.

Can we just face reality here and admit that the hiding of inactives is all about enticing players to gem. They are a business, and it's in their best financial interests to hide the inactives. That is why they do it. There is no other explanation.

[Ryusama]

The idea that the game is based on attacking active players is completely ridiculous. First of all, they designed the game so you have to be offline (in other words - inactive) in order to be attacked. If they wanted true PVP why would they make the game like that?

Reason number 2. An active player uses WAY more resources than they can ever hope to produce from our mines. If all of the inactives were removed and all that was left was active players collecting from their mines then the entire game economy would completely crash.

Can we just face reality here and admit that the hiding of inactives is all about enticing players to gem. They are a business, and it's in their best financial interests to hide the inactives. That is why they do it. There is no other explanation.

Well put, sir/madam!

[zachUVA]

The idea that the game is based on attacking active players is completely ridiculous. First of all, they designed the game so you have to be offline (in other words - inactive) in order to be attacked. If they wanted true PVP why would they make the game like that?

Nonsense. The game is based on building up your base, attacking others, clan wars, and playing for trophies. All of those aspects are designed with actives attacking actives in mind. Otherwise, why spend $1000s to gem those level 11 walls? Surely level 7s would be plenty if everyone was meant to just farm inactives all day. The forums are most certainly not a representative sample of the game's population, and as a result we often lose sights of such things.

The entire concept of farming within Clash started out as a few guys exploiting aspects of the game the devs clearly didn't intend to be taken advantage of. The game didn't even have a loot penalty at first; it was a reaction to people dropping cups and crushing newer players who couldn't properly defend themselves. Now of course farming has since become an integral part of the game, but mainly because it provides a way for players to continue playing for free without running into severe roadblocks. SC gets a massive playerbase, farmers get to play for free (if they choose)... it's a win win, but it's clearly not how the game actually makes its money. Your final paragraph speaks to this very point.

Reason number 2. An active player uses WAY more resources than they can ever hope to produce from our mines. If all of the inactives were removed and all that was left was active players collecting from their mines then the entire game economy would completely crash.

There was a time when this was an undeniable truth, but that time is starting to fade. Slowly but surely SC has been reducing the game economy's reliance on inactives, mostly through the league bonus and, to a much lesser extent, clan wars. There is a point where if you climb high enough, you can pretty much live off the league bonus and what your mines produce (where that point is is a whole other issue).

Now I'm not crazy enough to argue that we'd be fine if all inactives suddenly vanished forever, but I do believe SC is intentionally moving us towards attacking actives in high cup ranges. Depending on your views of SC you might think this strategy is either a necessary challenge to people or a thinly-veiled cash grab, but I do think that's where we're headed.

Full disclosure: In the past I have made several threads arguing that exactly this needed to happen, mainly so that players could trophy push without running out of resources within a week. I love what they have done to make pushing and resources work for those who don't spend (much). So independent of the inactives issue, this is where I always wanted the game to head.

Can we just face reality here and admit that the hiding of inactives is all about enticing players to gem. They are a business, and it's in their best financial interests to hide the inactives. That is why they do it. There is no other explanation.

Facing reality would be admitting that it's a little bit of ingame economics and a little bit of real world economics. This issue can be framed in terms of either, and I think both are right (and wrong) up to a point. As I've tried to outline in my points above, I do think SC gains from encouraging actives to attack actives, but I don't share the belief that the game would really be any more fun for us if they were to unleash all of the inactives. But I suppose that only depends on information we players don't actually have, such as average collector level, total percent of players who are inactive, etc. It's really a matter of speculation from our end as to what the impacts of unbiased inactive raiding would be.


One final point I want to make is just that we don't really know *exaclty* how inactives are "removed"/"pushed back", or if that process has changed over time. Pretty much all I feel confident saying is that not all inactives are removed (even after months and months of inactivity), that the bases which are "pushed back" are not practically different from being "removed" (ie. SC and players are arguing semantics, not practical implications), and that I do think updates/maintainence breaks play a role in the process.

That last point is something I actually looked at today. I loaded my alt for the first time in months, and it had two defenses on the log... both since the maintainence break on Thursday. So either the break wiped its defense log (doubtful, considering my main's was fine), or it hadn't been raided in months but came back in the queue following the maintaince. Make of that what you will.

[Rygy35]

Sadly, the truth is, supercell doesn't care about the players who can't find loot. They care about making money, and they make money through the purchase of gems. So by ruining their own game, they increase the number of desperation gem purchases and make more money.

[Smalls]

Nonsense. The game is based on building up your base, attacking others, clan wars, and playing for trophies. All of those aspects are designed with actives attacking actives in mind. Otherwise, why spend $1000s to gem those level 11 walls? Surely level 7s would be plenty if everyone was meant to just farm inactives all day. The forums are most certainly not a representative sample of the game's population, and as a result we often lose sights of such things.

The entire concept of farming within Clash started out as a few guys exploiting aspects of the game the devs clearly didn't intend to be taken advantage of. The game didn't even have a loot penalty at first; it was a reaction to people dropping cups and crushing newer players who couldn't properly defend themselves. Now of course farming has since become an integral part of the game, but mainly because it provides a way for players to continue playing for free without running into severe roadblocks. SC gets a massive playerbase, farmers get to play for free (if they choose)... it's a win win, but it's clearly not how the game actually makes its money. Your final paragraph speaks to this very point.

There was a time when this was an undeniable truth, but that time is starting to fade. Slowly but surely SC has been reducing the game economy's reliance on inactives, mostly through the league bonus and, to a much lesser extent, clan wars. There is a point where if you climb high enough, you can pretty much live off the league bonus and what your mines produce (where that point is is a whole other issue).

Now I'm not crazy enough to argue that we'd be fine if all inactives suddenly vanished forever, but I do believe SC is intentionally moving us towards attacking actives in high cup ranges. Depending on your views of SC you might think this strategy is either a necessary challenge to people or a thinly-veiled cash grab, but I do think that's where we're headed.

Full disclosure: In the past I have made several threads arguing that exactly this needed to happen, mainly so that players could trophy push without running out of resources within a week. I love what they have done to make pushing and resources work for those who don't spend (much). So independent of the inactives issue, this is where I always wanted the game to head.


Facing reality would be admitting that it's a little bit of ingame economics and a little bit of real world economics. This issue can be framed in terms of either, and I think both are right (and wrong) up to a point. As I've tried to outline in my points above, I do think SC gains from encouraging actives to attack actives, but I don't share the belief that the game would really be any more fun for us if they were to unleash all of the inactives. But I suppose that only depends on information we players don't actually have, such as average collector level, total percent of players who are inactive, etc. It's really a matter of speculation from our end as to what the impacts of unbiased inactive raiding would be.


One final point I want to make is just that we don't really know *exaclty* how inactives are "removed"/"pushed back", or if that process has changed over time. Pretty much all I feel confident saying is that not all inactives are removed (even after months and months of inactivity), that the bases which are "pushed back" are not practically different from being "removed" (ie. SC and players are arguing semantics, not practical implications), and that I do think updates/maintainence breaks play a role in the process.

That last point is something I actually looked at today. I loaded my alt for the first time in months, and it had two defenses on the log... both since the maintainence break on Thursday. So either the break wiped its defense log (doubtful, considering my main's was fine), or it hadn't been raided in months but came back in the queue following the maintaince. Make of that what you will.

I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on the first point. I just don't see how you can say they want an active vs active game if you can't attack someone who's online.

But for the rest of it, I definitely agree they are moving away from old school farming to the league bonus (I just moved up to champs because of that very reason although I'm back in masters due to my queen upgrading).

And except for gold, clan wars doesn't really add to much to the economy. You have to remember that one side loses, so almost all of that elixir and DE they used for massive army builds went to waste.

I'd be perfectly happy if they made a massive increase in the cost of everything but I never had to hit next more than 10 times. The next button is what is just killing the fun for me in this game. If I hadn't already maxed my defensive structures and had a nice base of lava walls I definitely would have quit by now.

And of course all actives aren't removed. SuperCell knows that if they did that then the game's economy would truly crash and burn. It's just simple math. They manipulate the algorithms to make sure there is a certain amount of total loot in the economy. As I said, it's a business and SuperCell does it very well.

[overlord]

I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on the first point. I just don't see how you can say they want an active vs active game if you can't attack someone who's online.

they want an active vs active game by making it more likely that you find a base that has been on recently(active), and less likely to find a base that hasnt been on in a while(inactive)

[ZebastianQQ]

they want an active vs active game by making it more likely that you find a base that has been on recently(active), and less likely to find a base that hasnt been on in a while(inactive)

thats stupid. where does those active players suppose to get loots if other active players is on the same footing as them (cant find loot)

its a chain reaction. how do you expect an active bases to have a loot to be looted if they as well cant find a loot

[overlord]

thats stupid. where does those active players suppose to get loots if other active players is on the same footing as them (cant find loot)

its a chain reaction. how do you expect an active bases to have a loot to be looted if they as well cant find a loot

there are still inactive bases, just the search isn't flooded with them as it would be if inactives were not touched by supercell