Clash Royale Is Going Downhill in 2023... (2024)

I think a major problem the game has is the fact it contains an exponential leveling system, that was only slightly reduced when card level 14 released. I feel this is why the Books became so powerful, when you take into account the card number required to upgrading common card level 12 to 13 is twice as large as that of common card level 11 to 12; and as for legendaries, the card number needed for the penultimate level is half of that needed to reach level 13 to 14. Of course, my main thought to part of this cause is because the game wants to give people a hook to engage into the game, thus the very small thresholds early on, but that doesn't change the fact that card levels 1-10 have thresholds that increase exponentially, and even at level 10, the card and gold requirement is simply a fraction of that needed to upgrade a card to max level. This is why the Magic Items were so powerful.
However, I feel that greed is the real motive here. If the devs really wanted to fix the problem of having high level cards anihilate early level players, they would have done something to prevent low level players from unlocking a champion via diamond pass early in the game and impliment a card level upgrade cap, similar to that of Clash of Clans, so that card levels don't exceed that of the king's Tower Power. That would have cut the rush and allowed people to take their time and focus on more than 8 cards, but since they allow players to have max level cards without any restrictions, the only gain I can possibly think of is that it may result in Clash Royale grossing more money.
Of course; the ultimate decision is that the developers need to make a choice: Make a good game, or good money, and I feel like they chose the "Good Money" option here. And honestly, aside from the UI, I'm not seeing many changes to the game overall, if the developers don't want to work on the game that much, just file in a resign and let someone who will actually care about the game take the job instead. Or will they not want to do that since having this job will give them more money and less work?
Anyways; here's the stuff I'll weed out that went wrong with the update and my thoughts on how it can be improved:
Season Tokens: RIght now, they appear to be grind-focused, for those that do not know, Season Tokens unspent at the end of a season are converted 1-to-1 for gold. I feel this is a bad idea with the season shop as it appears to punish players that don't want to play the game every day without having to spend gems (which you only get a hundred per month for free without masteries) or focus on the pass. I would simply impliment a cap of like 50,000 season tokens per account and let the tokens carry on over seasons. That way players can save up their tokens to focus on something they appear to be interested on, rather than not engaging at all finding nothing really interesting to gain from the season shop.
Pass Royale: Gold Crates are undefined numbers, and the value from the gold pass is *insert profanity here*. Plentiful Gold Crates has a value range from 2,000 to 5,000 coins, which is a massive desparity when it comes to value. Rather, instead of rewarding gold crates via the pass, just give the players a fixed ammount of gold. The gold crates were only introduced to help late-game players in progression back in 2021, I don't get why now they're being treated as a common reward. Additionally, Diamond Pass needs more USP to motivate players into buying it rather than just an animated banner and a royal wild chest. Same for the Gold pass as well. The pass is meant to give a good enough value to break the F2P resistance in a player's mind; now I feel that the offers have become increasingly more mediocre that F2P players aren't going to feel tempted to spend money anytime soon, and minnow may lose motivation into spending more money in the game. And to put that into perspective, the other player types; Dolphins and Whales make up less than 2% of all players in a Mobile game; and it seems that the developers are trying to design their game to make reaching their finish line acheivable for Dolphins and Whales only; which of course is bad as it won't really give people experienceing the game for the first time a strong motivation to play the game competitively unless they feel the value is worth the money they are going to invest. Personally, I would apply a season progression boost of some kind (like rewarding extra crowns) for the Paid pass users, and why not give Diamond Pass users the Gold Pass for free for the following season.
TL;DR, the Developers really suck at their job. They are trying to sap money so desperately that their greed has become obvious. The new Gold pass and Diamond Pass do a very bad job motivating players to buy them, having very few Unique Sellling Points, and it seems that the developers have the mindset that simply adding new levels will sucsessfully generate them more money (if that's the case, just add level 20 already!). This treatment is an insult to Supercell, and management better get their act up otherwise Clash Royale is going down, and will defimate the other titles as well.