Hard Closing is a legitimate Strategy

[Aussie guy]

I've been complaining since February about the problem of ghost attacks which is mainly caused by players hard-closing the game to avoid losing medals. Nothing has been done by Nexon, nor have they even acknowledged it as an issue under their sticky post on bugs and issues. It is not listed under frequently asked questions either, although they are happy to list trivial issues such as font displays in chat. I lost 92,000 coins again last night setting traps and ambushes for yet another ghost attack.

Enough is enough, I'm fed up.

I believe Nexon's lack of response or acknowledgement on this issue, essentially advocates hard-closing to avoid losing medals. If this game exploit is not recognised by Nexon, I can only assume it is a legitimate strategy fully approved by Nexon. So next time your troops are dying whilst desparately hammering away at a TC to get that victory, and the battle is lost...just do what Nexon allows and ignores...on an apple device, push the home button twice quickly and swipe up on the dominations screen...you will lose your army, but you won't lose your medals. Your opponent will be left with open traps and ambushes....and remember Nexon allows this and pretends it's not cheating. By using this technique, you will never lose an attack, no matter how poor it was.

If I get banned from those forms for promoting an exploit, keep in mind...I've posted about this since February, I have sent reports to Customer Service...they have had every opportunity to at least acknowledge hard-closing is an issue....and I have never been compensated for the millions of coins lost resetting my defences.

 

[Tickling]

*Ahem

Here at Big Huge Games we believe in second chances! Do you fail at other games? Does strategy confuse you? Do your friends call you not-so-bright?

Then we have a game for YOU! With our built in close app feature, you are GUARANTEED to never lose an attack! Here at Big Huge Generosity, we believe that failure is never an option! And best of all, you can keep that loot from your failur... err.. strategic retreat and use it to rebuild your army soldier!

Keep close-apping Leaders!

 

[USA Elite Will]

Clash of clans does not allow the force quite (hard close), they have it set up that when you do force quite you automatically loose the medals. They also offer a live view of when your under attack, you can watch the attack play out in real time.

 

[Yellowmar]

I think it a left over feature of the aborted alliance wars. What better way to test your alliance defences and share resources.

 

[umyo_]

I love this post!! WOW I can never lose!! Keep up the great work with your tips and techniques....

 

[Aussie guy]

Here's my first post on these forums from 15th February about this issue...https://forum.nexonm.com/forum/nexo...ivated-spike-traps-and-ambushes-but-no-attack

 

[Eddie F1]

I guess we are still waiting for Aulia Apprelia to get back

 

[acied]

Aussi guy... just curious... but how many players in the top ranking are using this exploit to get to the top, with 1 to win and 39 to loose all the time ?

Not to offend you, not sarcastic, this is a real question, I just would like to know what your thought is on that question..

 

[Aussie guy]

I can't speak for the top ranked players anymore. I'm now quietly sitting in the 2400 medal range, but I did get up to 2nd place in April...was in the top 100 for about four months. I have never used an exploit or hack during this time... until yesterday, when I tried it out on a level 163 hacker base...and yes it works! If I was medal driven, and faced with 1-39 medals all the time, this exploit is something that would be tempting to use....so in answer to your question, I suspect it is widely used by the medal-driven players, especially when they are faced with 1-39 battles most of the time....and I actually don't blame them...it's Nexon/BHG that allows this aspect of the game to exist, and probably encouraged by crazy 1-39 battles.

 

[Aussie guy]

As soon as there's an update, I'm sure Aulia Apprelia will make a special announcement.

 

[Cannibals]

Top ranked players don't use force quit ... when you only get 1 opponent every 10-90 minutes, you don't waste them. Any player that relies on force quit doesn't become a top ranked player.

 

[acied]

Well to be honest, I think alike.

The current medal system is not inviting people to not using this exploit.

Running into a cheater base, or for any given reaon it is the way out to ditch the corrupt medal system.

imo, I think there are ways to controll anything in your village by one or several cheats.
I even think...no,.... I know for sure there are smart cheaters out there...

I suspect that there are villages that have used cheats to have spiketraps making so much damage, you can loose almost your entire amry on that.
By not adjusting more then some extra hitpoints on walls and damage on spiketraps, no one will notice that they have cheated.

But unfortunatly we will never know. But seeing some raids on lvl 150 vilages succeed with ease, and failing to even beat a lvl90 village cause my army is suddenly gone or walls on wich seem very hard to break while they look like lvl8 walls makes me wonder..
No I have to correct myself, I'm not wondering, there are sneaky cheaters out there that have upped these things, whatever nexon tells us.

So as long as cheating is possible, as long as the medal system is corrupt, as long as we are encountering no opponents, i'd agree hard closing is a legit strategy....

 

[Aussie guy]

Cannibals, your opinion assumes that top players are happy to lose 39 medals on an attack if they lose. If a player is going for medals I don't accept that they are prepared to lose those medals on a miscalculated attack, which does happen from time to time on the best. If you get your one opponent after 10-90 minutes and are going to lose 39 medals, why wouldn't you force quit? 39 medals lost on one bad attack takes 39 wins to get back...doesn't make sense for them not to force quit. Any so called top player will struggle big time to reach the top unless they do. The force quit approach is just one exploit and cheat used amongst several by the top players....but it's the only one used that won't get you banned by Nexon. Some of the biggest cheaters in this game have reached the top of the leaderboards.

 

[Yellowmar]

I think the majority of the force quit occurs during a players climb to 2000 medals for the kingdom achievement. especially 1800-2000 where they face max bases 1, -39 and inexperience.

 

[Cannibals]

I don't have to assume anything about top players Aussie as I am one. Almost-top players have to use force quit when faced with a 39 medal loss. But a top player can't afford to get themselves into such a position ... they need at least one medal from every opponent because there are so few opponents. So if they're failing to win every battle then they won't reach top player status.

 

[Nathan Win]

I'm tired of winning 1-3 medals and losing 30+ medals. This looks very enticing.

 

[dbukalski]

Posting to confirm cannibals is a top player

 

[Guest]

We've admitted it's a problem; unfortunately for us it's not a problem with a simple solution. Are you force quitting or losing your network connection? Or did your device crash? Should we differentiate how we deal with those two situations? It's basically a tug of war between assuming everyone is terrible and punishing them all, or trying to treat people who get legit crashes/disconnects a little better.

As far as CoC goes, they use an entirely different server architecture, so that's apples and oranges.

I'll talk to our client lead here and see if I can nail down some specifics, and the why and wherefores to help explain what we do.

 

[leoelephant]

Iron angel, I thought the same as you that the complexity does exist because the cause of battle interruption can be various and should not be treated the same way.
But I think we can detect the cause and do actions accordingly.


If the app crash, it is different from force quit because the code will go to exception handling before shut down. Manual quit is os enabled feature so it won't trigger exception handle. It should be possible to detect. For server side to do action on the attacker player, server can pending an action to deduct medal. If the player goes online again and the app sends a message to tell server its last quit is a crash, the pending medal deduction is cancelled otherwise the medal is deducted upon its next login.

regarding to connection loss, I do not think it is necessary to differentiate it with force quit, because player can simply change device to airplane mode to fake a disconnection quit. I think it is fair to deduct medal in this case.

Last, for defender side, there is no change, the player's medal won't change after a abnormal battle interruption.

 

[Hunter Killer]

One solution would be to ensure the medal system is actually fair. As a lot of people have suggested before:

1. Give at least one medal per star won in battle (5 medals = 5 stars) and add extra medals on top based on medal ranking differences.

2. Reduce the number of potential medal losses to a reasonable amount (like a max of 10 for instance). You could put -150 or whatever you think is fit for the imbalance, people will quit before losing that so that number is useless anyway. Use an amount that people will be willing to accept losing instead. -39 is like 3-4 hours of play at high medal to catch up. Knowing that everyone else is doing it, you'd be silly not to do it if you fail your attack because you want to be the "better" player and care about your pride.

3. Have an asymmetrical opponent matching system. There is no need to be in the middle of a range 500 medals down, 500 medals up (or whatever you are currently using) to find opponents. On the downside, you should allow way more reach to solve the no opponent situation at higher medal range. If I have 3000 medals, let me attack a player with 2000 medals, they would actually be happy to get a peace treaty from me for one medal loss, no one will ever complain.

4. Only add loot of resources and trade goods after battle summary screen, like what is done with medals right now. If someone has taken 3 diamonds, they may be willing to accept losing 5 medals for that and not force quit.

This problem has to be taken as a whole. People force quit because it takes too long to catch up the medal losses because they can't find opponents to fight at high medal ranges. There are no opponents to be found because you don't allow people to attack the vast majority of people below 2000 medals, who actually wouldn't even care about getting attacked for a one medal loss from top players. People complain about huge medal losses because they get attacked by players lower in medals than themselves, never because they are attacked by players much higher who will only take one medal.

You could also add any players in an age equivalent or higher than yourselves to the list of targets irrespective of medal ranking. Why would a max industrial age base sitting at 200 medals be scared of an enlightenment player attacking him, even if this player has 2000 medals more? It just doesn't make sense, the industrial base defense has what it takes to handle it. And if not, he'll still get a peace treaty and only lose one medal. I don't see why anyone would complain here too.

In summary, make more opponents available, count loot only at the same time as medals and floor the number of medals lost to a reasonable amount. The problem will go away by itself but you need to fix the system altogether, not just one piece of it. You can't differentiate between voluntary force quitting and crash or disconnection.

People wouldn't care about medal losses if it was easy to get them back. Just like with resources, no one cares about losing 1m resources because it's easy to steal it back. Make it easier for people to win back the medals lost (more opponents, more medal rewards per star), give some enticement to accept defeat (loot and trade goods at the end) and this should improve by itself.