thought I logged in on finances.com for a second.
youre right ofcourse though, but lord flat earther is correct that its a boring ass meta we are playing in currently.
Players blame InnoGames for the boring meta, but there are really more macro-factors here to consider that forced Inno's hands.
18 years ago when this game came out, the competition was Flash games on sites like addictinggames and miniclip. As a browser game, TW could offer users a way to interact with other people and the game focused on player interactions, mechanics, and action - lots of wars, sniping, backtiming, farming, etc.
Now tribalwars has way more competition when it comes to interacting with other people, and tribalwars can never compete with the levels of action that games like Fortnite, League of Legends, Call of Duty, etc. So tribalwars had to reinvent itself, and found its niche among its more strategic/logistics focused members who focused on aspects of the game like resource management and tribal diplomacy - areas which tribalwars offers something the competition cannot.
In my opinion, the real tragedy is that as the pool of players naturally shrank (due to improved alternatives mentioned before), the remaining players became more inbred, to the point where 130 out of the best 250 players who started world 120 are already on the same team. The top 7 players are all in Kek, and 13/14 of the top players are part of the Kek/RULE/FIKA coalition. I would have hoped that as time went on, more rivalries would exist, resulting in more competition/tribal diplomacy. Instead the game has fallen into a play to win mode. Tsk tsk Kek, if you really love this game break up your tribe and fight against the best players this world has to offer (mainly yourselves).
As for the PE exchange, Innogames has to make money. And at least they put limitations on the PE which make it almost like a minigame where players have to constantly refresh and compete for resources. In the first couple days, the biggest limitation is not PP but rather how much time/patience you have to sit in front of a screen clicking refresh and trying to buy resources as fast as possible. It is really boring, but better than any other way I can think for Inno to capitalize on their player base.