How Supercell Broke the Farm in Clash of Clans

It is believed that the key innovation of the update, released on December 10, 2015, was the appearance of the Town Hall (the main building in the game) of the 11th level. Before the update, players could only upgrade the base to level 10.

However, the reason for the irritation of the players, of course, was not him.

The fact is that the update is divided into two large components.

The first part is external and well—visible. This is the content: a new Town Hall, a new hero Grand Warden, who increases the health of troops and shoots himself, as well as a new defensive structure Eagle Artillery.

The second part of the changes is implicit. We are talking about changes in the mechanics of the game. They were the reason for the painful reaction of the players to the update.

What has Supercell changed?

Disrupted the ecosystem

The developers have changed the conditions for issuing shields from attacks by other players and changed the system for calculating bonuses for winning.

Previously there were two main types of database:

• Type “A”: Town Hall inside. These bases were made so that the player could save not only his resources, but also cups (the latter reflect the coolness of the player in the world leaderboard).

Type “A”

• Type “B”: Town Hall outside (“outhouse”). Such bases are created by players so that the attackers demolish the main structure, get a “star” for it and, taking the cups and the bonus from the league, go home without touching the main accumulated resources of the player. The “defender”, in turn, received a shield for 12 hours and quietly lived on, not expecting new attacks.

 Type “B”

“Vyshenki” were very popular, they made up a significant part of all bases: depending on the league in matchmaking, they could be issued in 80% of cases (lower leagues) to 5% (medium-higher).

After the upgrade, the league bonus began to be calculated differentially and began to be given for the percentage of destroyed enemy buildings.

That is, if you have now destroyed the removed Town Hall, but no longer affected other structures, then even though you are given a star and awarded a victory, you are not given the entire bonus (previously, with any victory, a certain amount of resources was given, depending on the league in which the attacking player was).

This led to the fact that the attackers lost the incentive to stop. Now they are not satisfied with the demolition of the main building, they go deep into the base and completely plunder it, leaving the “victim” without resources.

It has become unprofitable for players to “take out” the main building behind the wall. For its destruction, a full-fledged shield was no longer given. More precisely, the shield began to be given based on a number of conditions (if you were attacked by troops of at least 50% of the possible number and destroyed at least 30% of your village). But when a player, for example, has only a Downfall destroyed, he does not receive a shield.

In general, it has become unprofitable to have a “B” type database layout.

What consequences has this brought for everyone?

• It has become very difficult to farm resources by raiding bases of type “B” and it is difficult to save these resources by earning a shield. As a result, many players began to quit the game, sell or give away their accounts for free.
• There has been a global redistribution of players in the leagues: a lot of people go down (merge cups, their positions in the ranking), where they can safely farm frankly weak bases.

Plus, there is an additional reason for the tops to go down. In the upper leagues, you can’t sit still, because now it’s impossible to get a shield without losing resources. There will always be someone in matchmaking who is stronger than you in skill or army. And such an opponent will take everything out of you anyway. And only in this case you will get a shield for a while, but when it runs out, you are guaranteed to lose a lot of resources again.

 All content innovations in one picture

Controversial decisions

By changing the basic paradigm of the pharma game, Supercell also introduced a number of controversial innovations, which, apparently, were supposed to compensate for the changes, but in fact only aggravated the situation.

• The developers have introduced an “intermediate shield” for 15-30 minutes, which is issued if the player has not received a full-fledged shield after the attack. Why it is needed is unclear. 15-30 minutes is a very insignificant time by the standards of the game.
• The maximum online has been reduced from 6 to 3 hours: now every player who has been in the game continuously for more than 3 hours gets a forced break for 15 minutes, during which he cannot enter the game (by the way, apparently, the intermediate shields are intended only for them). Do I need to explain that reducing the period from 6 to 3 hours has a very strong effect on ordinary players: cases of forced breaks have become more frequent, when players, for reasons beyond their control, “merge” their attacks in clan wars.
• After the update, the developers excluded inactive databases from matchmaking. By the latter we mean those where the owner did not go for 12-24 hours. This, however, is an unofficial innovation. The conclusion about it is made based on the observations of the players themselves. In fact, Supercell continued to “tighten the screws” on the farm after the update. Why? There are two explanations for this: this could be a certain countermeasure to the outflow of users, encouraging them to return to the game and see that their base is in order. Or the developers, again observing the outflow, decided not to give the remaining players excess resources.

Results of innovations

The overall result was the loss of interest in the game on the part of a significant part of the players due to difficult farming, the problem of resource conservation and the complication of continuous being in the game.

If we talk about specific facts, this resulted in a negative feedback on the forums and a drop in the rating of the application in stores. In particular, in Google Play, the average rating of the application for the period from December 10 to January 11 was 3.7 points, against a total score of 4.6, and in the App Store, the rating of the current version of the application fell to 4 points in the USA (other markets – up to 3.5) against a total score of 4.5 points.

Supercell Reaction

Despite the fact that the company decided to remain silent about the innovation, it took reciprocal steps. In particular, the company has strengthened the generation of fan content, and also (more significantly) for a long time (more than two weeks) maintained the price of accelerating resource extraction and building armies in 1 crystal (previously an unprecedented measure).

There was a hope that this would be followed by an update with a rollback, but the subsequent update, unfortunately, did not correct the situation. New features were introduced (a treasury and a daily bonus, which is issued for 5 stars in PvP), but not the cancellation of innovations.

That’s what turned out to be an ambiguous update in one of the greatest mobile games of our time.

What do you think about the latest Clash of Clans updates?