Clash Royale – one month in

Writing a short update to my previous post about Supercell’s new game Clash Royale.

A lot has happened in the one month since I started this game:

  • It’s still in soft-launch mode, but a wide-release window has been set for March 2016, and for both iOS and Android. So clearly Supercell folks are quite happy with the reception so far
  • The devs have started a regular balance cadence (3 so far, I think). These changes have created spikes of meta changes, as far as I can tell
  • Regarding my biggest gripe from the previous post (what I called the “anti-play” loop), not a surprise, this was also one of the biggest complaints from the early adopters. In response, Supercell implemented a fairly simple change – starting a game now costs nothing, but chest gold has been lowered slightly to balance. This simple move has been able to largely change how the game feels when played, at least for me – now when I’m locked out of chest slots, I’m perfectly happy to grind a few (actually, a lot) more games to try to progress in the ladder

A month in, I stand by my previous thoughts that the core gameplay is really solid – I’m still having a lot of fun, and I can feel myself learning and playing the game better. At this point, my current biggest concern with the game is how it will manage the tricky relationship between high-spenders and low-spenders/f2p players.

Just like Clash of Clans, this game has a deep monetization well – a Youtuber who is a top-level player mentioned in his reddit AMA that he has spent $4,000, and even with that he’s still under-leveled compared to some of the other high-spenders at the top of the ladder. This doesn’t mean this game is all “pay-to-win”; rather, it means that there’s a really high cost of admission if you do want to play this game currently at the highest level (another top 10 player was briefly #1 after dropping $5k on-stream to upgrade his cards).  This cost of entry at the “pro-level” is in pretty high contrast to Hearthstone (yes, players will be comparing these two games a lot), where there isn’t the concept of levelling up an individual card after acquiring it – which exponentially increases the collection depth especially with the higher rarity cards.

Directionally, there are “easy” fixes1, and the devs have already added support for one – capping the card levels in a “tournament mode”. This means that realistically perhaps even pure f2p players may have a shot at the competitive events (if and when they occur), if these capped card levels are still in the realm of possibility with free unlocks. Other directions could be to have a separate ranked format, e.g. a pay-to-enter queue (like Hearthstone Arena) where everyone is on a equal setting.

Another anecdotally interesting point: a lot of the top clans are apparently Chinese, despite the game not launched in the market yet. Some of these clans are by overseas Chinese; however this still is a signal to me that this game may have particular appeal to Chinese players. One factor to consider is that there are a lot of high spenders in games in China – this game’s mix of high spending requirements and skill may have a particular appeal to certain players in China.

  1. And this is probably not a new problem for Supercell, given their experience in Clash of Clans etc.

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