The October 2019 update for Clash of Clans is now live. This update is a quality of life update, meaning there is little in the way of new features and levels but improvements to in game tools and mechanics instead. One reason for the lack of changes is the final of the $1m Clash of Clans World Championship is this month and making gameplay changes could cause havoc for teams designing village layouts and attack strategies so close to the tournament. Another reason given by Supercell is that the development team have been working on “behind the scenes” changes in preparation for the next update at the end of 2018 that will contain new game content. It has previously been hinted that this next update will be the introduction of Town Hall 13

To summarise the changes in this update:

• Removal of Global Chat
• Introduction of improved Clan Finder/Clan Recruitment Tool
• Army Quick Train slots increased from 3 to 6
• Season Challenge Updates
• Clan Games Updates
• League Adjustments

Removal of Global Chat

The removal of the Global Chat channel is a substantial change to in game interactions. When the change was announced, one of the main reasons provided was that it was requiring a substantial amount of resources being dedicated to policing it. Although most players using the Global chat channel are looking for social interaction, there are other players with malicious intents such as looking to scam other players or abuse them through other means, such as threats of violence or predatory behaviour. Each instance of this would need investigating, and in the case of potentially illegal activities, law enforcement or other authorities would need to be notified to investigate it, even if it turned out to be someone trolling. When dealing with a game that is played internationally, multiple organisations can end up being involved for a single incident. These factors lead to Supercell deciding the best course of action was to remove the Global chat channel.

One use of Global chat was for recruitment, either players looking for a clan or clans looking for players to join them. In order to help fill the void left by the removal of Global chat, the in game recruitment tool has been updated with some improvements.

Introduction of improved Clan Finder/Clan Recruitment Tool

One of the main changes for recruitment is the ability for both players and clans to set up to 3 labels that describes their play style. These labels are used to help filter players and clans when searching to try and create good match ups. Players can set their labels on their profile page and clan leaders and co-leaders are able to set the clan labels on the clan overview page.

Once set, the icons for the labels are displayed on either the player’s profile or the clan overview.

Players are able to toggle a flag for if they are looking for a clan or not, which will determine if they receive invitations to other clans. This is very similar to how a player can indicate if they are available for Clan Wars or not.

Supercell have said the matchmaking will use a machine learning powered search function for matching players to clans, so the searches won’t just be dependant on the labels set. Due to the nature of machine learning, it is likely that the quality of matches will improve over time as the search function collects more data from people using the system.

Upon launch, there have been a few issues with the search results with repetitive results being returned leading to all of those players receiving enough invites to fill their inbox meaning other clans aren’t able to invite any players to their clan. There have been a couple of maintenance breaks to apply fixes in order to correct this. Once the system is fully up and running correctly, it should be a good foundation tool for recruitment. There is a lot of scope for expanding it further, such as labels that have requirements (ie. Active Daily requires them to actually be active daily), allowing a short amount of text for clans and players to describe themselves/what they are looking for or filter by language to name a few ideas. Hopefully we will see the tool developed further in future updates.

Army Quick Train slots increased

The army Quick Train slots have been increased from 3 to 6 and are available to all players without any gem cost to unlock. This is a great addition and will make experimenting with different army compositions easier without needing to scrap one of your tried and tested compositions in an existing slot.

Unfortunately, this change hasn’t fixed the issue of Siege Machines not being included in army compositions for TH12 players. It is a minor inconvenience having to remember to train whichever Siege Machine was used in the previous attack, however correcting that would have been another nice Quality of Life change.

Season Challenge Updates

The Season Challenges screen has been reworked to provide an indication of how many points are available through active challenges and how many points will be available through future challenges yet to be unlocked.

These are 3 new challenge types added:

• Win X battles using Y troops of a certain type.
• Win X battles using Y spells of a certain type.
• Win X War attacks.

This offers a bit more variety to the challenges we have already seen, which is refreshing.

A new achievement has been added called “Well Seasoned” that tracks points earnt through Season Challenges. On the surface of it, this is a some extra gems for players as they work through the thresholds, however another benefit is providing a tracked value for clan leaders and tool builders to make use of.

Clan Games Updates

Clan Games have received some love also, with the addition of a new Task Revive feature. This allows a task that expired before it could be fully completed to be revived through Gems and allow it to be finished off. This will be beneficial for players who have almost completed a high point challenge then been unable to complete it on time to complete it and earn those points.

Players who score the maximum points for the Clan Games will now be able to choose an additional reward from any of the unlocked tiers. This will be a motivator for all members of the clan to contribute as much as they can rather than being tempted to score a few points and let the other clan mates carry them.

League Adjustments

A number of adjustments have been made to leagues for both the Home Village and Builder Base.

Since the introduction of the reworked Legends League (Operation Blue Skies), the issue of clouds and increased matchmaking times have been resolved at for Legends League, however the clouds have been worse within Titan leagues. To help resolve this, the Guard length for Titan 1 is being changed from 4 hours to 3 hours, and Titan 2 changed from 3 hours to 2.5 hours. This will increase the number of villages available to attack, so should decrease the matchmaking time.

Another change for Legend League players is an update to how the layout cooldown time is calculated. It will now take into account the time remaining in the current set of matches, rather than being a fixed time cooldown.

For the Builder Base, the end of season trophy reset is now 5000 instead of 4000. The rewards available within the 5000 - 6000 trophy range are being made better as a consequence of this.

Clash Ninja Upgrade Tracker

If you are looking for a tool to show you remaining upgrade for your village and help you plan your upgrade order, check out the Clash Ninja Upgrade Tracker.