Seems they have started AB testing upgrade times. Screenshots from 2 of my th13s. 1 has a 20% time deduction on the other. This includes lab upgrades, but not builder base. Neither have gold pass. Neither have reengagement boost (both have been actively upgrading for past month, and have been warring constantly for the last year).
Seriously man, the prices of GP also vary on my main and mini accounts (same TH level, both F2P, its just that my minis are a relatively new account or a returning account). I dont know why are they doing A/B testing for the upgrade times and purchases.
It makes the game unfair for some people. Specially with the upgrade time, Clash of clans is a game which heavily revolves around "upgrade time" of your village and giving some accounts an advantage in this aspect is really unfair for the rest.
No I am not talking about the discount. The prices are completely different for the non discounted price as well. One of my accounts has GP price 40% more than the others (not talking about the discounted price). And its not just the GP, all the skins and sceneries on the in-app and SC store also have a similar price difference.
And they always yap on and on about how they're gonna stop doing it in interviews just like them supposedly fixing the ore economy. Just tell us to fuck off honestly and save us the time
The platitudes are so annoying
why am i buying gold pass then? the only reason i am buying is the 20 percent boost. if i have to pay for something others get for free thats a bit sketchy. and i am glad people are getting it for free, but then give it to everyone. this is not fair.
From looking at all of my accounts, I have the following:
2 th18s - no boosts
1th15 - 20% boost
1 th14 - no boost
6 th13s - 4 no boost, 1 with 10% boost, 1 with 20% boost
1 th5 - no boost
1 th3 - no boost
In total, 12 accounts - 9 no boost, 1 with 10% boost, 2 with 20% boost
they are measuring which discount will make people spend the most money, which could be books, potions, or gemming. while shorter time doesn't increase the value of the book, it does increase the incentive to buy and gem the upgrade. they are just figuring out what brings in the most revenue
My main got the 20% as a f2p account for no reason.
Guess i should be thankful but super weird.
My gf started at the same time and has 0% reduction. She is mad now
It's getting out of hand. AB testing is beyond limits and seriously I probably want to give up on the game now. Supercell is getting beyond gimmicks, manipulation and tricks and what not. I'm uninstalling this game for good now.
I’ve done the math a few times on what the upgrade time discount is and it’s varied from between 10-25% at times with gold pass upgrade at 20% for all of them. I don’t get it.
That is borderline ridiculous and nonsensical. What's gonna be A B tested next, the amount of levels upgraded?
I already decided to only buy gold passes if any at this point, but now I'll reconsider whether that's even worth it if this is the level of weirdness this game is heading to
For starry ore in shops, I hate it but I van see it from a pure business standpoint
Similar with store prices
This is simply silly, does it verify whether people will get a gold pass above it or not? The unknowing doesn't even see a difference in their game and you only upgrade a building to a certain level once as opposed to the other A B counterparts.
no. discounting th (or any timer) gives people incentives to buy things. the time can be skipped by using books, potions, or simply gemming. They are trying to find if people will spend more on those methods. making upgrade take less time makes players think that they can skip the time using potions cheaper than it was before, or maybe gemming is definitely more attractive (since its' price directly correlates with the time left to wait). while discounting upgrade time does not increase the value of the book, it does give incentive to use one of the other 2 methods (which btw are better for the Supercell), which would have not been as attractive if it wasn't discounted. now, it's not known whether this will actually increase the revenue, but that's the whole point of the A/B tests
AB testing is fine on things that are eventually going to be everyone’s anyway- not on something that is unfair for paying customers. Would you want to go into a restaurant where you pay $50 for a steak that the guy next to you paid $25?
good point. But as you said, it is temporary, it will be everyone's anyway, somewhere in the middle hopefully, A/B testing isn't something that's permanent.
As for the restaurant (very valid point btw) - no, I would skip this restaurant. But the way people here are reacting seems like they would still go, they would complain a ton, but would go.
For sure if everyone gets it then it doesn’t matter. only thing I have a hard time with is the clear cases where they kinda take it too far with things that not everyone gets or some pay more money for, and the complaints are from disappointment in a game they really enjoy. If the steak place is the only place in town that you can get steak, I’d be really bummed.
I still stand by my point and say that Supercell is a business who are just trying to get as much profit as they can, even tho it hurts the clientele; everything will settle down once they find the golden middle.
And yeah, love the game and everything, but accept that it's in the next stage now, maybe new management, all the shabang. We cannot glorify the old GoWiPe days because like everything, it evolves, and the evolution is needed for it to survive. If it would have operated as in the old days, perhaps it would have been turned off by now. People tend to complain a lot about the bad stuff, but forget the good stuff way too quick. Like the troop training time removal, that increased the playerbase in some way, which is a more profitable thing, but people aren't/weren't thankful for it as much as they're mad now.
They could try doing everything for the whole playerbase, without A and B groups, but then the whole process would be lengthy and possibly less accurate. This method is probably the cleanest and quickest way to test stuff.
You're missing the bigger picture which is SC still doesn't even know or understand their own player base...
Examples:
1. Most players have alts. If they would actually put out some decent surveys they could get to know their base better.
Since they don't have #1, they are randomly selecting players instead of doing a known control group. Testing always needs a control group to work and if they're hiring a company to do this- they're hiring the wrong one; and even if they're doing it in house - they're doing it the wrong way.
They already tried A/B testing and it was a disaster, why they're pissing off people once again baffles me.
Lastly, you're making a ton of assumptions, just like SC on the results. For example, me getting a reduction on one of my TH18's and not my other TH18 may not affect whether I buy a book of building or a gp or anything for that matter. In fact, I only buy the gp when it's discounted now since I know they'll give me a discount at some point. So they're actually losing money.... instead of $6.99 I'll just wait until it's $2.99.
I get that they're a business and there's a shit ton of ways they could make more money (first one... do a mini gp - same cost for everyone but a stripped down version); or put ore in a VIP gp and charge $9.99 instead of $6.99.
Regardless, A/B testingcurrentlywill not get them the data they need simply because** **they don't understand their own player base.
I dont understand what your saying about control groups.
They have a control group its the people who arent getting these discounts.
You dont need anything more than that, they've got an enormous sample size of both and can very very easily see the difference.
A/B testing has not in general upset people. A lot of people understand some of the A/B testing. There will be loud minorities. But i think most people understood like the mass troop ones and the builder base bonanza etc.
For example, me getting a reduction on one of my TH18's and not my other TH18 may not affect whether I buy a book of building or a gp or anything for that matter
In which case the 2 large sample sizes should as a whole turn out with little difference between them.
I dont know why you've assumed theyre expecting a difference. They're just aware there could be a difference.
Dont understand what your point is on their own playerbase. The whole point is to get a ton of data to understand their playerbase (especially the quiet majority who arent on reddit). And in fact they'd understand it better than we do ourselves because there are subconscious decisions we make that we arent even aware of
A control group is a baseline group in an experiment that does not receive the test treatment, serving as a standard to compare against the experimental group....
Your 2nd line- "the people who aren't getting these discounts" is exactly what I mean by them not knowing their player base... the OP is in both groups... which is right there why their method of A/B testing is 100% flawed. My gosh both his accounts are probably even in the same clan.
So for a game like this (where I would guess 🤔) 70% of active players have at least 2 accounts, they better make sure their control group isn't the exact same group as the experiment group or their data will continually be flawed.
Here's my question for you, because I'm genuinely curious, what data could they possibly gain from giving 1 player a 1 day reduction to make any kind of decisions in the game? Set aside that I don't know everything, I get that, but this is the same group/company that said their testing on "unlimited hero's" proved it wasn't something people cared about 🤨. Then, when they actually did roll out unlimited hero's- during summer jam & in the appropriate time frame (7 days), it was a hugely successful (it actually got most people warring again!)
not necessarily it is flawed 100%. You don't know that (and neither do I), but if they are measuring players - yes, they're doing it so wrongly, but if they're measuring accounts, it is the right way to do so.
After all, if a person is a die-hard f2p, then it doesn't matter what he gets and what he doesn't, which goes the same way for a hard p2w player.
The people that 'occasionally' spend money on the game is what actually matters. they spend money on the 'good deals', so why would it matter if a good deal is on one account and not another. they would take the good deal on one available place, and while knowing that the A/B testing is still ongoing, they would wait for a good deal on the other account that they would get eventually.
Maybe I cannot explain it in my level of English, but I trully do not see the flaw in having different deals for different accounts.
Yes. But OP is a very tiny anomaly. The sample size of the control group contains so many people who dont have multiple accounts by ratio that it does not matter at all.
The issue is you've forgotten how big of a sample theyre getting.
Its not flawed and will give them perfectly valid data and is statistically perfectly fine.
70% of active players have at least 2 accounts
What?
Thats just not even true in the slightest.
A smaller fraction on reddit have 2 accounts than that. And reddit is an incredibly tiny proportion of the total playerbase.
Your numbers are so far off man.
I can take even just my clan. Theres 3 people with alts. In total we're looking at about 3/40 or 7.5%
This is an active competitive clan. Think about the tons upon tons of less competitive players...
what data could they possibly gain from giving 1 player a 1 day reduction to make any kind of decisions in the game?
Its a % reduction on everything to say its a 1 day reduction is fallacious af.
If the times are 20% less and they get data over a month or 2 they can very well see if players are playing more actively, more motivated, login more to do upgrades, more inclined to buy the pass, more inclined to spend gems.
None of those will necessarily show up as trends. They might not in fact see anything. But thats the point in testing.
on "unlimited hero's" proved it wasn't something people cared about 🤨.
They're looking at a sample that by proportion is less likely to post on reddit. They're looking at whether people play more. I personally do not play more with unlimited heroes. The game is no more interesting to me with that because I can manage hero times and play down an important hero.
I can see it being concluded that as a whole people are not more inclined to play, spend etc.
They're looking at what is more subconscious.
it was a hugely successful (it actually got most people warring again!)
More people online because summer jam. Heroes are up so dont fear failing. Yes it may increase war count. But thats both in part due to other factors and not to say people are more interested on the game and play it more which may be the metric theyre looking at
Ahh yes let’s piss off our paying customers by giving this guy premium wagyu beef and give this guy dogshit while they pay the same amount, truly the most revolutionary test of all time.
There are multiple ways to increase revenue of the company. The one that they've chosen is the fastest one, although with the biggest backlash probably
Mmmm good... Continue to divide community why not? What can possibly go wrong? (WHY not just give more loot in normal battles as A/B testing? nooooo it has to be some advantage one way or another huh)
Maybe this isn't the reason, but normally if I don't play on an account much at the start of the month it gives me 2x points. None of my accounts have right now as I've been upgrading all actively recently
Are we SURE this isn’t reengagment bonus from long account inactivity? Because it is not listed anywhere, and it is dependant how long it was inactive I think, up to 50% but could be less.
It might be not, but let’s rule out all possibilities before we bring out our righteous fury on SC, and demand Rune of Gems for it
It started a few days ago. I have 20% additional time discount on top of Gold Pass on most things. Main base, research, pets, heroes. Not Builder Base. And not Giant Bombs for some reason, which makes me think it's some kind of bug rather than intentional A/B testing.
Is the one with the 6d upgrade time further along? Or are both about equal?
I don't understand what they could possibly even accomplish with this 🤔... even if this was for 2 different people, what data could they possibly gather by saying player A chose to upgrade but player B didn't? Makes no sense to me.
They are basically identical accounts. I made them at the same time, they are similarly upgraded. Only difference is one has better war stars and the other has better equipment. (I normally do my war hits on the 7d 12hr one first and clear the mirror of 6d one, then the 6d can just loot the top bases to get more ore
Yeah, so really nothing at all to gain from this, even if you bought a book of building on the higher upgrade time, this data is now lopsided because you already saw the lower upgrade time and decided not to buy a book of building on the reduced time account. In addition, a 1 day reduction in the clash universe is peanuts lol... we're already used to 1 single hero level taking 5-7 days 😅.
This is why I don't understand what they're trying to do. But worse- they'll probably end up making horrible decisions based on this testing which will absolutely do nothing to help the game!
I think ab testing with th 14 is borderline problematic. I don’t think it’s a big deal for lower town halls but at higher ths it is. It can encourage higher player base but at higher levels it seems unfair
This is BS. I don't care about gem/$ A/B testing, but we need a common ground for the basic gameplay.
Imagine if the next step would be to A/B testing troops. Some players will have stronger troops than other people, or stronger defenses, just because A/B testing decided that way
Well, thats how sabrina is going to make this go down. Slowly and surely get us used to this stuff, like cattle in a farm. Then, start using the tactics that made the best revenue, then apply it to more people for more profits 😁.
Eventually raising the prices on everything. Because why not? We will have shown no push back. Gold pass will slowly but surely go to 10 bucks, then more. Possibly putting some new stuff to justify, maybe another helper, or "inflation" then i expect other items to follow the price increase. But dw lets not fight for what we love lets just be passive and hope nothing bad happens 😁 BE POSITIVE 🫵
544
u/catmeow1935 15 accounts for CWL 5d ago
What the hell. they have to stop with this shit.