Clash of Clans : 5 Things I would add / improve
Clash of Clans requires no introduction. This super crazy, super popular game from Supercell has been the number one game on AppStore & PlayStore for several months. This 4 year old game is so addictive that it still has several millions (~30mn) Daily Active Users. I, however started playing this game in mid 2016 and it brought back the classic Age of Empires feelings.
The game has all ingredients in perfect proportions to keep players hooked. I check my village every now and then to collect resources and to see the remaining timer of my current upgrades, it has all elements to bring player back to the game again & again. A single post would not be enough to describe how good the game design is, the economy, the mathematics & psychology that team has put in behind the game. Every player has his wish list for the game that they want in next CoC update, I am no exception.
I have five small additions & improvements that I would want to see in this game to enhance the overall game experience.
1. A clear difference between First-Attack and Revenge-Attack : There are two kinds of one-on-one attacks that can take place between two players, either a player initiates attack (First-Attack) on another player for raid or the player retaliates (Revenge-Attack) by attacking his attacker. Right now, this is the notification for both kinds of attacks,
It would excite me more if I knew that this player has come for revenge because I raided his village last night. So I would rather want to be notified as “MGCT-jiie has come for the revenge!”. After the revenge attack finishes, I see an information box like this,
How about showing here who caused more destruction in this overall battle. Did I loot more in First Attack or did he loot more in Revenge Attack?
2. Allowing PDMs : After a successful victory, I want to send a laughing proud king emoticon to my victim. When I see that my village was looted by another player, I want to send an angry king emoticon saying “You shall pay!” to my attacker. As a player, I want to convey my immediate emotions to the other player after battle is over. They have done this perfectly in Clash Royale.
3. Mark shielded villages : Okay, so I am scrolling through list of attacks done on my village by other players, which tells me if my defence won or lost. I want to attack this player who attacked my village last night and looted 101k gold from my storage. I visit his village to make an attack strategy and accordingly train my army with 16 Giants, 40 Archers, 5 Balloons. After 30 mins of training, I finally click on ‘Revenge’ button.
A red warning appears “Can’t attack! Village has active shield”. WTF! Why could you not have told me that earlier? I trained my army for this village. Every village layout is different, I may not be able to effectively use this trained army for other layouts. I have faced this frustration almost everyday. There should be a way so that shielded / guarded villages are marked explicitly in the list.
4. Allow specific player discovery : There exists a way to search specific clan by using its tag id but there is no such way to do with players. I have a particular use case, I want to create a strategy to do revenge attack on a player which I want to share with my clan mates for suggestions. How do I tell them the layout of this player, we cant share screenshot in clan chat. But if I could tell them a unique player id which they can use to search this player and then come up with their suggestions.
UPDATE : After the 12th October 2016 update, Supercell has allowed specific player search in Clash of Clans 😀
5. Worth the attack? : This is a minor improvement compared to other four. When I am searching for villages to attack, it shows the available loot for each village. I have 30 seconds to decide if I see this village worth the attack, there is one missing factor however. I want to see the cost of my army to decide the worthiness of this attack. I can obviously calculate my army’s cost, but why not show it somewhere on the screen, maybe just above the troops list?
BRB, my village is under attack.
