Billionaire Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Corp., speaks in front of mobile game images of Clash of Clans and Boom Beach by gamemaker Supercell Oy during a news conference in Tokyo, Japan, on Friday, Aug. 8, 2014. (Photo : Noriyuki Aida/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Supercell's "Clash of Clans" developers are facing criticism for the changes made in the Town Hall 11 update. The changed personal break system proves to be detrimental to the gameplay experience.
According to fan comments via Reddit, most players are miffed about the way personal breaks are implemented.
The game developer company unveiled at the end of November that major changes will be coming to the game's personal break system. Currently, gamers are penalized for a few minutes after three hours of unprotected cumulative online time. After the update, it emerges that the timer resets after receiving a shield or in case a gamer has not been attacked for 30 minutes.
The first issue with the change on the personal break system is that there are some circumstances where gamers cannot get shields due to constant attack. The implication is that the counter continues to rise without being reset.
Another problem concerns the new Village Guard element that is meant to sustain clans when their masters are away. For instance, in case the Village Guard is active for 30 minutes during an attack, the allocation time continues counting towards the three-hour limit. As a result, when the player is ready to log in, he or she is kicked offline because such features were functioning without control.
The problem affects even gamers who love checking Clash sporadically throughout the day for small activities like chatting or gathering resources. Such small tasks add to the ceiling time.
Players receive a reminder whenever personal break time is about to start, and as soon as the notification appears, 30 minutes of idle time is enough to counter it. However, the kicker is too unpredictable after the warning appears. For this reason, the session may stop at a terrible time.
While Supercell is mum concerning the issue, it appears to be probably fodder for tweaking in upcoming patches.
Clash of Clans Town Hall 11 update was released on Dec. 10, and it came along with higher-level troops, a new hero, and some "quality of life" improvements. The game is available on iOS and Android devices.
Watch the clip below for more information on Town Hall 11 update personal break timer.
