Global chat is not where all players hang out when in game. Most are in trade or guild chat. And during the hour I was on I did not see any discussion of an unscheduled maint downtime. I lost the gem progress. I lost the chance for the last explorer send. We need in-game and at least 24 hrs unless it's an emergency hot-fix, which are truly & legitimately unexpected.
I am now down to playing about an hour a night because gameplay is becoming more and more tedious. Most of that hour is spent clickclickclickclickclickclick to sent out explorers and geos. By the time that's done I am bored. The events are too numerous and too close together with event items too expensive. Events used to be special and uncommon, event currency was sufficient to achieve a reasonable number of event special items, and the long period between events gave them a "must play" feel followed by months of normal to recoup resources, place new content and figure out how to balance production. Now event mode is the norm and gameplay has become enslaved to whatever event resources are demanded. Events spoil the TO because nearly all trade is geared to event resources, and the events are repetitive. I spent the entire Halloween event just cranking Strom Recovery to supply the fields.
Seriously, there are so many small things that could be changed to entice players like me into playing longer and even spending gems occasionally. We don't need additional levels if all that brings are more troop killing advs and large footprint buildings. What we need are more ways to personalize our islands like rotating buildings, removing/repositioning trees & rocks, more deco items like trees, flowers, medieval walls, etc. Since we can't have free move days we need the ability to store buildings then rebuild them AT THE LEVEL THEY ARE WHEN STORED. We need to be able to move buildings around to accommodate new content. We need to have more buildable spaces on the expansion islands.
I hope once the move to Unity is complete that developers will spend more time reading player ideas, suggestions and complaints and try to keep player interest up once we achieve the 65th level. Bogging us down with excessive exp gaps demanding more hours to advance ain't the way to go. We need game content that rewards things other than whack-a-rama adventures. It's a sim game, can't we sim more than battle?