Today, we received a new update from Supercell for Boom Beach. The main content provided was changes to prototypes (including a few new ones that rotate, the times they last depending on the level and cost), a massive nerf to Pvt. Bullit and the Mega Crab (to name the major stuff). As always there were cries of QQ on the forums (reddit) and many unhappy campers. Some people also said “Boom Beach is dead!” Is it though?
On Reddit, someone showed the general stats of the game which is roughly a player base of a little over 300k, according to statistics garnered through a Samsung device. That’s worldwide numbers (not sure if this is inclusive of Apple). While that can be a respectable number, it feels a bit low for a game that is produced by one of the larger mobile game developers.
From my point of view as I approach a maxed out base on one account, I feel that the amount of content will gradually slow down on my main account once I obtain all the main upgrades to my base. I estimate that could take three more weeks at most, which afterwards, I’ll probably just do enough to max out each hero through the daily rewards and trader submarine.
But I have no plans to climb the leaderboard for operations nor victory points. Practically speaking, neither have any significant interest to me since that’s just a slow, tedious grind with no reward. This makes me believe that in the end, like other max level players, there really won’t be much for me to do once I finish. So in that sense, these people are right in that the game is dead.
The real nail in the coffin is the attitude by Supercell that demonstrates the lack of commitment to the game. I read a transcript from a Discord chat with their community manager. The attitude for the common complaints raised was, “We’ll see how it goes.”
That’s an awful response and shows that the developers really don’t care in pivoting, despite how the community (especially the hardcore players) have reacted negatively towards the changes. The problem is that Supercell can take months before putting out a content patch. And while I can’t disagree on the effort that it may take, I think at the very least they can communicate better and have a more sensitive feedback loop.
And the adjustments really are minor changes in the overall scheme of things. But their release cycle is just so slow that people will become apathetic and stop supporting them. This ends up providing a negative feedback chain where the company just sees the game as something on life support as opposed to investing more resources into adding new content.
Also, the content itself given the time is quite pathetic. It really feels that the company cares little in adding resources to improve the base compared to titles like Clash Royale or Clash of Clans. Even Clash of Clans added a separate meta inside the game. While it follows similar mechanics, there’s enough content to grind out for a while.
I feel that the core issue is that the game is reasonably balanced at the moment with the current structures from Supercell’s viewpoint. But it’s horribly stale and Supercell is unwilling to break these formulas with more gutsy adjustments. In truth, the game really isn’t that balanced as it is stable in terms of that base. High end game play pretty much ends up being some variation of smokey zooka or warriors. That’s not balanced at all and caters to a single style of game play.
Adding a crab event really does nothing too. It’s just more of the same. But once you hit max level, there really isn’t much of a purpose to play in the same fashion. You can skip things like the crab or Dr T and even Imitation Game. since those are all resource driven.
At any rate, I really can’t wait to wind down this game. It’ll free up my nights even more and I won’t have to rush home to do anything.