I wanted to wait a while after the update before deciding whether or not I liked it, instead of a knee-jerk reaction. Now I feel I have to say something.
I fully understand why Supercell made the changes they did: they never intended TH sniping to be the norm, and they want to encourage people to perform powerful raids, as the game was originally intended. Indeed, I have often thought in the past that if only every player whose base was less than max would always leave their TH outside, then we could all very easily grab the bonus loot for winning with every raid, and make millions per hour. It would have become easy to get enough loot to max out your base - and only then when it was maxed out, and you didn't need the loot, would you finally bring the TH inside in order to fight for trophies against other maxed-out bases.
Okay, so now that has been stopped - and to compensate us for the loss of the TH-sniping and easy shields, Supercell have allowed us to attack through our shields: the idea being that with multiple attacks, we can more than recoup the lost loot from the last raid.
This probably worked out very well in theory in the Helsinki boardroom. However in practice, what it now means is that players are compelled to raid at every opportunity in order to make best use of their new shield. If I get a 12-hour shield, then it makes most sense to perform a new raid immediately after the shield is granted; and then a further raid (or two) with no delays in between, in order to maximise the ability to raid through shields.
However this also means that if I get a new shield just after going to sleep, then the first 8 hours of that shield will be "wasted" while I'm asleep: and even that relies on me performing a new raid first thing in the morning. I feel that this goes against Supercell's alleged wish to let players have a better life/game balance. On the contrary, if you want to keep ahead in your loot, you are compelled to spend even more time in the game. If you don't, then you will lose more loot than you're able to raid.
Another consequence of the update which I'm sure Supercell did not intend is the new "race to the bottom". Let me explain:
Pre-update my regular army was a cheap looting army: lots of goblins, with giants as distraction and archers for support. When searching for bases to raid, I would love to find ones with full collectors round the outside (don't we all!): however as you don't always find these easily, it's also necessary to expend the whole army penetrating the centre of the base to get at the loot storages.
When performing a fully penetrating raid, my army is simply not equipped to deal with inferno towers. Therefore invariably I would skip past TH10 bases with inferno towers, even if there was lots of loot - simply because I knew from experience that if I tried attacking, the infernos would make short work of my army, and I would not gain much loot. Therefore I would restrict my raids to TH8 or 9 bases.
I used to be in Crystal league. Most bases were a mix of TH9/10. However since the update, it seems that the TH10 bases with inferno towers form the majority of bases all the way down through all the Gold leagues, and into Silver...! Obviously, in order to avoid wasting time "nexting" through endless TH10 bases with infernos, it has become necessary to drop trophies to try to get matches with easier opponents. However I'm not the only one with that idea: everyone is doing it! Hence the big "race to the bottom". It's a challenge even trying to stay in Silver 1: as soon as your Guard expires, you get raided multiple times by other players also trying to drop trophies. Because they're just deploying a hero and then surrendering, you get no shield: you just keep gaining back those trophies, until the next time you log on, you're back up in Gold 2 and all your opponents have infernos again.
Yes yes, I get it: Supercell are a commercial company and they want to make money, and therefore they want to encourage people to spend gems on training fully-powered war armies all the time. However for the casual player, we still want to be able to use cheaper looting armies. Even with my full-powered war army, my troops aren't strong enough to properly defeat a TH10 base with infernos, and even if I get half the loot, the elixir/dark gained won't be enough to cover the cost of my army! As it stands, I see that the direction the game's going is to be only for those rich Arabs and Chinese who dominate the top leagues by gemming their armies all the time.
I'm not sure how Supercell should fix this. Perhaps they could re-introduce the concept of getting an automatic shield once the TH is destroyed, but in a reduced manner: for example a TH snipe could grant a 6-hour shield, instead of a 12-hour shield as it did before. They can retain the concept of using the TH as a loot storage, so it would still discourage people from leaving their TH outside all the time - however at least people would still be able to surrender one storage's worth of loot in order to guarantee a shield, and not be forced to plan their lives around maximising the potential of a shield when they do get one.
Maybe Supercell doesn't like the above suggestion: it was just the first idea that I had. Maybe they can think of something else. However the main point is that Supercell need to acknowledge now that the December update did not go entirely as planned, because although it has superficially solved the TH-sniping problem, it has created other, more serious problems. Several of my clan-mates have already talked about quitting the game: we're casual players who just want a bit of entertainment, and if the game is no longer entertaining, then it will drive people away.
Originally Posted by fplant
