CLASH OF CLANS: CHALLENGES & EVENTS

While the Clash of Clans community awaits the arrival of the much-hyped Spring 2017 update, the development team continues to roll out weekly events and challenges. In this post, we take a look at the trend of events, what the SuperCell team is trying to get out of them, and think about a few great ideas for future ones.

Useful to the player or a distraction by Supercell?

Since the 2016 Christmas Update, the game has featured non-stop special troop, spell and/or reward challenges and events. They range for the super useful 1-gem collectors boost, to the basically meaningless skeleton spell cost reduction.

For all troop events, players are challenged to win three raids during the event in order to under extra XP and gems. However, with spells they are only offered at a discount. Thus is players do not use them, or even want to at the lower price, it becomes a pointless event for a few days.

It would be ideal if the game offered up a way for players to rate or vote on events in-game. During each one, players could state whether they liked or disliked the events, giving SuperCell data on player preference. Of course everyone will love gem boosts or cheap Wizards, but did they enjoy (and want to see the return of) the Earthquake or P.E.K.K.A. events?

What is the purpose of these events?

While there are a lot of various impacts to individual events, there are two main focuses –
(1) reward players and (2) teach players. When a troop or spell is discounted significantly it helps players either raid with cheaper armies, or add traditionally more expensive troops to their farming army for a limited time. Not to mention the one-gem collector, hero or barrack boosts that seem to send raiding into a non-stop marathon for a few days.

On the other side, SuperCell is looking to help players understand the value of troops and spells they think are underutilized at times, or educate entire war attack strategies. Take for instance, the jump spell. Discounting the jump spell by 90% incentivizes players who may only use the Earthquake Spell or wallbreakers, to try adding the Jump Spell to a few army combinations. Low risk and cost, to help learn a new technique.

They even went as far as doing a full attack strategy recently with the GoWiWi (Golem, Witch, Wizard). Requiring players to use a set number of each troop, the team developed a video to teach players how to go about deploying them correctly. For hardcore players, especially those in clan wars, the GoWiWi has long been a known style, and thus not really a challenge or learning opportunity. But for the majority of players out there, this may very well have been the first time they had heard of or attempted it.

At the end of the day, some events will be great for individual players, while others will seem pointless. Use the ones you can (discounts and boosts), and know that there is always another one coming in a few days.

A few ideas for the future are (1) Dropping the Clone Spell space size down to two for a few days, (2) Giving heroes the change to use their ability twice in one attack, and (3) Increasing the attack timer back to 3 minutes and 30 seconds, to allow for longer, multi-phased attack strategy.

Clash of Clans phone cases?

Ever wanted to play Clash of Clans on a giant sword? How about sitting in class or at dinner with a boulder? Well you are in luck! Thanks to get the team at SuperCell you can now purchase three different life-size Clash objects as phone cases. Take a look at one of them below: