Clash of Clans 2019 Q&A with Darian on the TheLastWar

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Clash of Clans 2019 Q&A with Darian on the TheLastWar

Hello Chief! It’s time to find out the questions we asked Darian, cm Supercell for Clash of Clans. Before starting I would like to thank: first of all thanks to Darian, for the patience and for having accepted the interview on TheLastWar (the first Italian website to host him), to Emanuele Italian cm of Clash of Clans without which all this would not have been possible and Francesco, member and staff of the site who immediately believed in the possibility to realize this interview.

This is the interview in English, for the Italian I recommend you click here.

Hi Darian thank you for being here and giving us time to respond to TheLastWar, the Italian site of Clash of Clans born back in 2016. In this interview that will be your first on an Italian site, we have prepared 10 questions: 5 proposals from the staff of our site and 5 outputs out of our readers. Let’s start now:

1) There is always talk of Clash of Clans or Supercell, but often nobody asks: who is Darian? What do you do in your life and what led you to be Cm of Clash of Clans and what do you think of the Italian Community of Clash of Clans?

Darian) Who am I? Wow…this is a question that would take almost a novel to write. So I will give a summarized version. I am one of several Community Managers at Supercell. My job is to be the global Community Manager for Clash of Clans. What this means is that I am the official voice and face of Clash (although Supercell could’ve picked a better looking face!).

How I ended up at Supercell is a very long journey through a variety of different jobs. I studied medicine at university, but I realized I wanted to do other things. Since I’ve been doing martial arts and gymnastics since I was 7, I was doing stunts for movies (I was near Hollywood, after all). I eventually started my own racing magazine since I love cars. This led me to get into advertising and marketing. This eventually led me to working at Blizzard Entertainment where I was a Player Support trainer (I trained new employees how to do support). After 8 years there, I became an Art/Technical Design Producer on the crowd-funded game, Star Citizen. I also got to interact quite a bit with the Community and discovered my love for being a Community Manager. It was during this time I discovered Clash of Clans.

One day, I saw in the Clash of Clans News section that Supercell was looking for a Clash of Clans Community manager. It was a one in a million shot, but I applied. I never expected to hear back but one day I got the phone call for the interview and here I am.

The lesson of that story is never let an opportunity pass you by. You never know what might happen!

With regards to the Italian Community, the Italian Community Manager Emanuele has always spoken very highly of the Community there. I’ve only been to Italy once and didn’t really get to explore very much, but it’s a country with a rich and incredible history that I can’t wait to see again. Definitely some of the best food I’ve ever had. My godmother is Italian, so I grew up with a lot of Italian culture in my life and I would LOVE to visit a Clash of Clans Community/Fan event some day soon!

2) A couple of weeks ago we wrote an article on “Operation Blue Sky“, putting forward hypotheses. Could you tell us something? Will the problem of clouds in the Titan / Legend League be permanently resolved?

D)We know that the Cloud issue has been a problem for a long time. But we also agree it has been a problem for WAY too long, and it is past time we finally address it. The name “Operation Blue Skies” is an attempt at being funny. After a cloudy day, when the clouds finally disappear, all that’s left is a beautiful blue sky and that is our goal with this project.

We are looking at how to change the way the Legend League works so that players in those higher Leagues are not stuck waiting for hours for a base to attack. There have been many incredibly creative suggestions on how to fix the clouds from our Community. There is a thread on our official forums that is a couple hundred pages long with players discussing how many solutions would work and what complications they would cause.

The reason I mention this is that it shows just how incredibly complex the cloud issue is and that many of the proposed solutions also have complications as well. If there were an easy fix to the clouds, we would have done it by now. We don’t like it when player can’t play our game!

We aren’t ready to share what those changes are just yet, but there are many things that have to be taken into consideration when creating a solution. Some of the things that need to be considered are things like:

How do we make a system that’s fair and still allows players to get attacks in?
How do we make a system that inspires players to want to get to the top?
How do we create a system that allows players to do attacks when there aren’t enough bases at the top?

There are a lot of other factors we are thinking about as well. We are hoping to have the fix to the clouds within the first half of 2019 and we will share details as we get closer to releasing it!

3) The Clan War League is the beginning of an iceberg: what should we expect in the future from this
mode?

D)Over the past year, we’ve introduced a lot of new content that was designed to help speed up the upgrade process. Clan Games introduced Magic Items which led to the release of Town Hall 12. But all of that was leading up to the release of the Clan War Leagues.

The War Leagues was designed to be a competitive environment where Clans from around the world can compete to finally prove who is the best in the world, and in order to compete with the best, you will also need the best. This meant upgrading your offense AND defense. Everything we’ve released over the past year has been leading up to the War Leagues.

Over Christmas of 2018, we announced we are hosting the Clan War League World Championships. We have partnered with the E-sports League (ESL) and will be providing a roadmap leading up to the World Finals later this year. This is the moment where Clans will be competing for a massive prize pool on the world stage to once and for all crown the best Clan in the world.

Although Clash of Clans has been out for 6 ½ years, there has never been an opportunity to finally prove who the best Clan is. There have been numerous community-driven Leagues such as the CWL, NDL, etc. but this is the first time we are hosting a world championship for Clash of Clans and we are incredibly excited.

There will be Clans from every corner of world competing for a grand prize and we can’t wait to see how intense the competition will be. So if you think you’ve got what it takes to be the best in the world, make sure you register once we have the competition site up!

As far as the future of the Clan War Leagues, this is only the beginning. We are also looking at other ways we can improve the system. We are evaluating different sizes of Clan War League tournaments other than 15v15 but we haven’t made any decisions yet.

4) A Leaks that is very shared by our site is that of the resource market: are there plans to introduce the
possibility of exchanging resources among the members of the clan?

D) We don’t have any plans to introduce a method of sharing resources to the game. In Clash of Clans, collecting your own resources is an important part of the game’s strategy. Being able to share resources goes against this philosophy and opens up the door to potential abuse. We don’t want the ability for players to be able to sell resources for real money, and sharing resources opens the door to allow this through 3^rd party sites. Therefore, we will not be introducing this kind of system.

5) Clan Games: it is thought to introduce a filter or a minimum threshold of mandatory games to do in order to redeem the prizes? Many bosses complain that they have met players who enter the clan make 50 points, take the prizes and exit later ..

D)The Clan Games are about the Clan, not the individual. Implementing any kind of restriction or limit for the Clan Games is entirely up to the Clan itself and how that Clan’s leadership manages their Clan. In our view, it shouldn’t matter if someone contributed 4000 points or 50 points.

Look at it this way, if a Clan is at 49950 points, and a single person contributes 50 points which helps the Clan get to 50000, should that person get kicked? We feel that every person who contributes should get access to the rewards. It’s all about helping the Clan get rewards so they can upgrade faster. Restricting players goes against why we created the Clan Games.

Not every person has the ability to contribute max points every time. Sometimes a person might be busy with work or have a personal emergency where they simply can’t play the Clan Games as much. Therefore, it is up to the Clan to decide how they want to communicate with their members.

If a player only contributes 50 points and leaves, they aren’t taking anything away from the other members. Everyone earns the same rewards. Nothing is taken away from the Clan and everyone earns something.

Questions from the community:

) Will it be possible to withdraw from the treasury a single resource and not the entire content?

D) We get this question a lot. And the answer is “no”. When you withdraw your resources from the Treasury, it should be a calculated risk. Being able to keep specific resources inside the Treasury actually harms the game economy by reducing how much loot you are able to raid when you attack a base.

If you want to withdraw your Dark Elixir from the Treasury, this means you need to think about if you want your other resources available to be stolen by attackers. This is all part of the game’s strategy and it’s unlikely to change.

7) Will a log donation be inserted to see who gives and what, so as to avoid unpleasant situations?

D) We have discussed this quite a bit. It is something on our wishlist to add hopefully in the future, but there’s no guarantee. It would be nice to know who donated Wall Breakers when you requested Giants, but we have to calculate how much programming resources goes into it. It’s a nice thing to have but we haven’t made any final decisions yet.

8) Will it be possible to improve the walls with the Black Elixir?

D)Again, this is something we’ve discussed for future Town Hall upgrades. We understand that at the higher levels, many players have a lot of Dark Elixir in their Storages. Allowing players to upgrade their Walls using Dark Elixir would reduce how much Dark Elixir is available in the game economy. Since it is one of the most valuable resources at higher levels, we want there to be a balance between how difficult a base is to attack versus how tempting it is to attack a base that has a lot of Dark Elixir.

In the higher levels, there needs to be a readily available source of Dark Elixir to raid. Allowing Walls to be upgraded with Dark Elixir would reduce how much Dark Elixir is available.

9) Will it ever be possible to change the name of the clan by paying a sum of gems or resources?

D) We know this is a feature that gets requested a lot. Like so many other features, it is on our wishlist of new ideas. Right now, this has been set aside for a later date. There are many, many reasons why we haven’t implemented this yet. Right now we are seeing many players returning to Clash of Clans and rejoining their old Clans. Changing the name of their Clans would make it difficult for returning players to find their old homes again. But that is just one of many reasons.

We may implement this in the future, and it is one of the most requested ideas.

10) Will there be new roles for clans over Recruit- Elder- CoLeader?

D) There have been many suggestions on how we can improve the Clan roles. One idea was a Clan War General who would be responsible for assigning targets during War. But many of these roles can simply be accomplished with normal communication. We don’t want to add more roles just to add more roles. There needs to be a unique reason for it. Adding more roles would add more complexity when it isn’t needed.

We haven’t seen a need for more roles yet, or haven’t found a compelling reason to add more.

11) Will the Constructor Village play a key role in 2019? Will you receive an update?

D) We are planning on adding Builder Base 9 this year. We have some fun ideas in mind for the next Builder Base level but you’ll just have to wait and see what we have in development!