I agree the rebalance is harsh for current players. All of the folks in my alliance are scratching their heads, we had a hard enough time before winning now we don't know. I myself noticed it during a world war when my first attack against a player 20 levels down failed completely. Then I attacked someone 40 down with everything I had boosters, generals, coalitions, mercenaries, 150 of my max-enhanced infantry with healing, and shield. Same result, nothing. Most of the attacks in the war had the same result, nobody is winning.
My case, I have been playing for years slowly building up attack strength through all the channels available. There is really no more advancements I can make until the next level. But I am level 191 with 30 to go, it took all summer to advance 2 levels with lots of activity. I will never see 230 at that rate. Raiding takes 2 to 3 times more troops, yields less since there are more spawning and incoming fire. But full battles where you throw everything in now seem pretty unproductive.
Attacking and perhaps winning is fun. Waiting for days and weeks for upgrades to finish and being attacked is not fun. I think a big part of the fun is gone. It was already borderline as it was, at least for me. So I will probably exit the game.
However, I do not fault Nexon. They know what they are doing; maximizing the return (money) from the game. The game is a time-limited game like most build/attack games - essentially you reach a development dead-end in the game, how many more ages are there going to be, Internet Age, Skynet Age, Star Trek Age? So it seems that rather than extend the game out into the future by adding more ages, which is probably costly in terms developer time, it makes more sense to extend the life of the game by really slowing down everyone's progress - this rebalance essentially removes months and perhaps years of progress folks have invested in attack strength, right? And makes getting to the next age a lot longer. Doing this extends the income stream from the game. How does Nexon make money from the game, two ways that I can see. Ad revenue and direct purchase, both of these are driven by players striving to advance. By stretching out timelines at little cost (basically fiddling with a few hitpoint numbers in the existing game and some PR) they are hoping to extend the income stream from a finite-duration game.
And to me, as a capitalist, this makes perfect sense. Nexon knows these games require a sizable initial investment and the return comes over time after the release. They also know these games have a finite lifespan (Clash of Clans?) so why would they invest more? They are maximizing their return on investment with these rebalances (and future ones as well perhaps) by slowing down the game. Good for Nexon, I wish I could invest in them.
But the game is not fun for me anymore.
