fakeasnever said:
@fletch706 (13 March, 2015, 12:14 AM UTC):
Easy?Yes.
Effective?
Yes.
Cheap?
Yes.
4:1, right now lol
Easy?
Yes.
Effective?
Yes.
Simple?
Yes.
Cheap?
Well.. yes.
4:1 right now... but....
*[Leaves the game because of slap-in-the-face pay-to-win game mechanics]*
...the :1 wins. This is not democracy, nor dictatorship. This is reality and reality shows that there are hundreds of similar games to play.
I don't care scores. I care reality. And the reality is I don't play games that are not fun to play and make me feel like wasting my time. I used my time to get more pixels (aka "army") to be proud of it and have fun with it. Seeing it wiped after rain of missiles is NOT fun. You could instead just announce:
"from now on expect that your troops will disappear without warning; we don't care how many hours you spend in front of your PC/tablet/phone building troops and how much you value them; we don't need you playing at all; we need you to buy crystals, not enjoy playing".
That's your message and to me, as a game designer, you are failing here massively, earning temporary profits graph rise against loss of long-term player engagement that you have built with other, great game features. People are not idiots (well, most of them) and it is clear as sky: attacker buys missiles (spends crystals) -> defender uses infirmary (discounted or not; spends crystals). Would you accept it as a player?