Comments on: Deconstructing Clash Royale

By: Kay.I

Kay.I — Mon, 07 Mar 2016 00:36:55 +0000

Was the same for me, slows down at Arena 4, a little bit grindy at this point. Great game overall though.

By: Daniel Kromand

Daniel Kromand — Fri, 26 Feb 2016 22:53:53 +0000

In reply to novat2. Ah, sorry. That was a misunderstanding: What I meant was that players feel disincentivized to buy chests from the shop (not unlocks from the earned chests), as long as they feel like they progress within a reasonable time frame, simply because buying chests from the shop becomes progressively better. I also definitely feel that Arena 4 is the first spike and from talking to other players it seems like this is where most people first feel it.

By: novat2

novat2 — Tue, 23 Feb 2016 19:06:41 +0000

As far as I’ve seen, with enough dedication, you’ll eventually get to higher arenas through sheer upgrades of your cards. You’ll collect enough of Arena 4 cards to upgrade past your competition in that arena, and eventually will go to Arena 5. It’s true that Arena 4 is the first bump on the road, and it’s been so far the longest Arena to pass for me. I think it’s made to drive you to invest in order to go to further Arenas (mostly because the leveling for cards start to be more expensive and harder to obtain without paying). This is their second strong conversion point. First the timers of the Chests, then the slowing down of progression through Arenas.

Regarding your comment on higher Arenas being not as interesting as they make it sound (at least that’s what I understand from your last sentence :), it’s not exactly true.
The higher the Arena, the more gold and cards per chest you get, and thus the faster you can level up your existing cards, on top of getting new ones that are different (maybe better), and more specialized, making the meta game more changing at higher Arenas.
So it’s interesting to get to higher Arenas for progression, regardless of whether the new cards are better or not.

By: Daniel Kromand

Daniel Kromand — Thu, 18 Feb 2016 09:48:05 +0000

One thing I am quite curious to see how they handle is long-term engagement and progression. You don’t mention it in the article, but cards are tied to arenas, so that players can’t find high-end cards until they have unlocked the high-level arenas.
This gives a good sense of progression in the early game, but also means that bad players (like me) can’t even hope to get the best cards, since I am unable to progress beyond arena 4. Going forward it will be interesting to see how Supercell adds new cards to the mix and what the requirements will be to unlock them. If it is just arena-based then low skill players won’t feel capable of even unlocking the new content.

This also has a weird effect on spending behavior, since players might (falsely?) think that the cards from the high-level arenas are better, and thus you should buy chests from the store until you are at max arena level…

By: Jordan Klink

Jordan Klink — Tue, 16 Feb 2016 18:06:47 +0000

Hey it’s been a while but thanks for posting another great article! I haven’t gotten to play this yet but it definitely sounds addicting. If the game causes a shakeup, I hope it ushers in more games without energy systems and gives more developers the confidence to satisfy this:

“players won’t grow tired of playing their game… no matter how much they play”