Yeah, this is just plain idiotic. I woke up this morning expecting to have enough gold and resources to upgrade my headquarters. Nope. I was continually raided overnight be players almost twice my level and logged on to find that I had fewer resources than before I went to sleep. I also agree with you regarding the troop AI. What's the point of using combined arms, all with different strengths and weaknesses, if they all just attack whatever the hell they feel like?! There's nothing quite like sending in a heavy to draw the fire of a machine gun, only to watch your melee unit run right past him and get his head blown off by a stream of hot metal.
Aren't you using your flares to direct them? If not, do that. If you are, plan it out a little better. The only attacks I lose are against the bosses / resources basses, but those are supposed to be very difficult.
I agree that it's silly for the game to allow people to attack other players at much lower levels than them. I would guess this is an intentional part of the free-to-play mechanics though, since it puts more pressure on players to level up quickly, which in turn provides more motivation for them to use up their diamonds and buy more. I don't really agree about the AI though. I mean, I agree they're dumb, but I think that's intentional and actually increases the amount of strategy you need to apply. The AI behave in very predictable ways, basically always attacking whatever is closest to them unless directed otherwise by a flare. When you plan out an attack, part of your plan needs to include taking into account how long your flares will last, and how much energy your gunboat will have to fire enough flares to direct your troops where you need them. For instance you might come up with a plan which includes having your troops take out some barrels to get enough energy to fire enough flares to direct more troops over to the headquarters. You also need to plan where to drop off your troops taking into account that they'll head for the nearest structure. You can often preserve your flares by taking advantage of the AI behavior to get them part of the way to the desired destination before firing a flare. Also be sure to upgrade your flares along with your troops to make them last longer. Basically, I think simple but predictable AI behavior, combined with managing the energy of your gunboat makes for interesting strategic planning.
All that said, I'm finding I'm already starting to get a little tired of the game. I'm mainly getting tired of the fact that you can only play in little 5-10 minute chunks unless you want to spend lots of money to bypass timers. I'm sure for a lot of people that fits in well, and even for me it does a lot of times. However I also like to be able to occasionally sit down and really dig into a game for an hour or more, especially strategic games like this, and it's frustrating not to be able to do that. I'm glad I tried the game though. I had never tried any of these freemium base-building games before, and didn't understand their appeal. I now get how fun they can be, and also I've started to see how they can be addictive and why Supercell makes $650,0000 a day from Clash of Clans. I'll probably end up going back to playing XCOM Enemy Unknown for my strategy fix.
I totally agree, I think I'll be heading back to XCOM as well. I have grown to love the simplistic style of Boom Beach, as well as the live action strategy aspect, but until Supercell releases premium versions of their games there will always be a pay wall sooner or later.
Same here. I really enjoy the game, but the timers are starting to kill it for me. I'd love to play a premium version of this game. I understand that for a massively multi-player game like this they have ongoing costs to maintain the server farm they need to support all those simultaneous users, so I'd have no problem even paying $5 a month to keep playing a premium version. With this game though, unless I'm willing to only play it in 5 minute chunks, I'd need to spend a lot more than that.
The outcome will be the same as in CoC: Either you spend more and more money on it each day, or you play less and less until you lose the interest totally, because the waiting time and the pay per win idea starts sucking from day to day a bit more.
I'm feeling that right now, I get about 5-10minutes of gameplay then have to pause for 4-9hrs. Really weird concept and definitely doesn't entice me to play more.
Yup as a new player you guys are dead on. Now my timers are two hours plus, some four. My play style is wait, play five minutes to road someone who stole a single island. Update and wait four hours. This is a time passer between other games. Shame. I don't ever feel the need to pay as it doesn't allow me to play more.
Paying would allow you to play more, but the question is how much you need to pay. I'm fine with paying for games, but the price needs to be reasonable. The problem here, as with a lot of f2p games, is that the amount you'd have to pay to play it like a premium game is actually much more than what a real premium game would cost. Early on it seems like a $5 diamond bag will make a pretty big difference, allowing you to bypass timers whenever you'd like a longer playing session. As you progress though, everything gets more expensive, so now you'd need a $10 bag to make much difference, and so it goes. Contrast this to something like WoW, where you pay a $15/month subscription fee, but then you can play as much as you want. I don't think this is worth as much as WoW, but I bet a lot of people would pay a few bucks a month to play a premium version of this. I think the current model works out better for Supercell though, so I guess it is what is, take it or leave it.
I once paid 10$. My HQ was about level 5. I spent 1000 of the 1200 diamonds within 5 minutes, just speeding up the upgrades ... maybe I leveled everything one level higher. It is sick to do this all the time. I play Revo Games, Air combat, I pay 5$ for a game and then I can play all day long for years. This is real gaming fun.
Deleted it yesterday, I think this is just a really bad game compared to Clash of Clans (which I've been playing for about 6 months now without spending money on anything consumable - just paying a one-off $10 for builders), I genuinely can't name even one thing that that Boom Beach does better. Yeah, CoC starts to feel a bit stale once you hit town hall 9 and the wait-timers do start to intrude, but reaching that stage takes about 4-8 months of constant play given a high level of activity, and you can hardly complain about paywalls that hit after playing for that length of time (how many premium iOS games do people really play daily for 6+ months?). However with Boom Beach I felt a pressure to spend gems right from day 1 - there is nothing to do and everything is so slow. I think it has novelty for the "Ive played CoC for over a year and it feels stale now" crowd, but that's about it.
This really isn't true though; there is no need to spend money on consumables in CoC unless you are trying to do high level trophy play (which you aren't, for the first 6-12 months of play). The difference is that a) CoC has 3-5 builders whereas Boom Beach only has 1, and (more importantly) b) in CoC you can attack as much as you like to gain resources, and there is always things to spend resources on (mainly walls) so you never really need to spend real money or wait around. Part of the reason why Boom Beach is so disappointing is because imo CoC already solved the problem of how to make freemium work. Its a great game that appeals to both the players who want to play 'normally' without spending money,, and also to the serious players who have been playing for many months and want to have a shot at cracking the top 100 leaderboard. Boom Beach feels like a huge step backwards, its almost a regression to Zynga-level gaming. Its a shame because Supercell made a fortune from CoC, there was no need for them to try and aggressively monetize more. Ive never felt any pressure/need to spend resources on finishing upgrades/troops in CoC, whereas I felt this in Boom Beach right from the start, because unless you pay money you are forced to play in 5 minute chunks due to the lack of things to do.
I wasn't precise, it was written so you could misunderstand me. You don't have to spend daily money on CoC at all, this is true. Me too, I bought two more builders at the start. But the outcome was same: the interest starts dropping once you start to wait to long for some upgrades. CoC was better, as you mentioned. But after a while it gets boring too. I found it very annoying to buy all these upgraded bricks all the time. I wanted to fight, not working in a construction office. Now it seems as if CoC gets some more input with clan wars. This would be great to have in Boom Beach too, because I like the way of attacking much more. You have to blame yourself it is doesn't work, not the stupid wall breakers. Would be nice to do this for and with your buddies. Now you only can watch their village.
Well sure, almost all games start to feel boring after a while regardless of how good they are. Thats the same with premium titles too though; apart from a tiny handful of standout titles, you aren't realistically going to be playing most games daily for months. The question is how long it takes to feel stale. For me, CoC took months, while Boom Beach took days.
No ressources anymore I tried to max out my defense. Now my attackers are too weak. After two or three mistakes I don't get enough resources to get the bases back and I get flooded with enemies I can't compete with anymore without spending money on diamonds. Bye, bye, I delete this crappy app.
Same. It's a shame too because there really is a brilliant game design here underneath the freemium stuff. I wish they had fleshed out the single player campaign a lot more beyond the tutorial, but oh well, I got a good chunk of fun out of this while it lasted.
You guys are judging this game before really getting into it. Without spending one penny you will soon have hours of stuff to do a day. It is *nothing* like the usual timer based F2P games. Of course it is going to start out slow, wait until you open up the radar and have a dozen AI bases and another ten player bases to battle every day. All money does to this game is advance you into a higher league of gameplay. The matchmaking is brilliant and fair to everyone.
This mirrors what I've found. Haven't spent a penny and have had loads of fun (currently at level 18). So many of the battles seem to be decided in the dying seconds. Love watching the replays. Just wish I didn't know the result beforehand.
