When I was newer, this is what the endgame looked like to me as well. But now that I’m there I understand that there is at least one other option. Build teams around a first/second turn mana generator and hit the opponent so hard they can’t recover. And once you realize that those are your only 2 options, and there are only so many teams that can be made that fill either of these requirements, the game gets pretty boring.
And then after some time you see them release new troops every week that don’t fill either of those roles. And on the rare occasion that they do, the nerf brigade pulls out their pitchforks and heads to the forums demanding that they make the game boring again.
I like your suggestion of refund for lowies.
I’d increase it to level 100 though. Level 15 is nothing, no time to test and try out much.
I started in December - so just 9 months ago - and can agree to your points.
My main problem was to figure out which troops I should level and use, which are useful esp. for pvp. Asking players wasn’t much helpful since most of them are high level and their suggestions not practicable for me. I started with Goblins too, their extra turn is a great help for beginners. Later Undeads and when I had my first 4 Dragons then I switched to them and stuck there… am level 660 atm.
A refund option would have been nice to figure out something working.
Playing PvP paid off more than doing the kingdoms quests… I think I ended the last quest around level 500 just to be through with it and get the +extra gold each day.
Same with Explore. I don’t find Explore much useful. If you speak about the weekly bonus and if that bonus is money then PvP without a weekly bonus still brings more money than exploring with weekly bonus. I only use Explore to farm souls if I urgently need some or for the slight hope of a certain traitstone.
Next was the lack of informations, like spending the glory for the weekly pack to get traitstones, keys, money and a new troop. I so had not clue about this for like 100 levels. Not even my random guild told me (which I joined around level 20 out of curiosity and was annoyed I didn’t know what a boost a guild brings).