From the weekend until today, I managed to push a Landing Craft level 16. For the first 12 levels, I spent Diamonds to upgrade my newest Landing Craft, something I considered employing a Builder instead. Now that I managed to hit my first goal, I want to re-examine if a Builder is really worth subscribing at this stage in the game.
I’ve read other players insisting on subscribing for the Builder so that I could pop out more Landing Craft as quickly as possible. The truth is that I’ve found that the amount of resources that I manage to accumulate just aren’t enough to justify the cost. People might say, “Well, you could use the resources for a small defensive upgrade.” To me at this stage of the game, most defensive upgrades are wasteful unless I really have nothing else to upgrade at the moment. Considering the Iron cost for many of the upgrades at this level, even if you do a full clear, I doubt that you can manage to get enough for a double Landing Craft upgrade.
I feel that the Builder as it stands is simply too limited to be useful, at least for a mid to upper level player. I get the feeling that it could take me a whole week to get enough resources for what I need. The Builder feels more like an impulse upgrade tool rather than something that can really benefit me. You’re really better off storing up the Diamonds and just rushing the completion of key upgrades, at least from my point of view.
The Builder really feels like it has been designed purely for lower level players as a catch up mechanism. At the lower levels, resources are easier to acquire even passively, which makes the Builder useful. The only way the Builder can be useful for a player like myself is if we have better ways of acquiring resources.
Supercell has mentioned that there are new ways such as the Mega Crab and Imitation Game, neither which were available when the Builder feature first was requested. While it is true that both events provide more ample resources (Doctor T is really cheap btw), neither occur frequently enough for the Builder to be justified still. I could see the Builder being useful during a Mega Crab style weekend (or week even) outside of low level game play. But the event just needs to happen on a more regular basis, perhaps even monthly to make me even considering forking over any money for this feature.
Again, I think the ultimate issue here is that Supercell simply needs to find better ways to intrigue people to stay in the game as well as educating players on more optimal routes of play. For players that they’ve lost, they need to re-engage them through some form of dialog. It could be something similar to Blizzard’s Scroll of Resurrection that has a mutually beneficial purpose. So the Builder, might help new players but I don’t know if it’ll solve their larger problems in keeping players interested to strive towards the end game.