How Clash Royale can be more interesting?

I have played and loved Clash Royale for four and half years now but I’m afraid the game has constantly been dying in the past few years. Right now it’s safe to say this is the worst state the game has ever been in. The player base is continuously dropping and interest in Clash Royale is coming down, which is evident from the views Clash Royale YouTubers get these days and low interest rating on Google trends. Why is this happening? This downward slide can mainly be attributed to Clan Wars 2, but there are other reasons too. I myself was barely clinging on to the game when Clan Wars 2 completely killed it for me. Before I start off with all the stuff Supercell got wrong, I must say the two new cards (the Electro Giant and more importantly the Electro Spirit) were unique and seem decently balanced as of now, so a good job done by the balancing team.

This article is an attempt to propose certain changes that I would like to see implemented in the game as these changes, in my opinion, would make the game much more enjoyable.

The biggest problem in the game right now is the progression system. Majority of the player base is in an awkward situation right now. We can divide the player base into a few groups-

1. Maxed players
2. Players with many max cards
3. Players with a few max cards
4. Players with level 10–12 cards
5. People who start fresh

Maxed players have every reason to quit right now. Ladder sucks for them because it is just about reaching close to your PB every season and dropping back after season reset. Ladder is very competitive, boring and repetitive for most players. Some players just cannot reach above their personal best no matter how much more they play. Since they are maxed out, they will not be attracted by special challenges because they don’t need those rewards.

Players with few or many max cards face a similar issue. They mostly would have leveled up their one trick ladder decks and have no interest playing ladder anymore. Maxing all the cards as a Free-to-play takes way too much time and no one would have the interest to to max random cards when they already have a ladder deck leveled up. For example, it takes about one season or sometimes more to get a common from level 12 to level 12. Rares take at least 3 whole months.

As for players with level 10–12 cards, these are the very players who sustain the game. Though this is also the same group that rants about facing low-skill max players at 5,300, they are also the players that can make most progress in the game. They can improve on their levels very quickly (for example requesting efficiently can let you get a common from level 10 to 11 in about a week and from level 11 to 12 in about 15 days). These players benefit the most from special challenges and global tournament rewards and also improve upon their PB.

As for new players, the progression system does allow new players to progress really fast. But new people push to 4000 (arena 13) in just one week these days. This is mostly because of the numerous bots below 4000 trophies. But once these players reach 4000 trophies they find it very hard to progress further without a one trick ladder deck. Focusing on one trick ladder decks is not really good for new players as they need to get all their cards to level 9 in order to have flexibility during special challenges. Also, I can’t think of reasons why anyone would start playing ‘CLASH ROYALE’ now.

The next big problem is Clan Wars 2. The biggest flaw of Clan Wars 2 is the game modes. Who wants to play ladder style 1v1s for clan wars! Earlier, when I used to get bored of ladder, I used to play the classic deck mode or triple draft mode in Clan Wars. Now when I play clan wars, I am forced to play ladder style 1v1s or the terrible PvE mode. Now players are also required to level up 32 cards in order to do well for the clan. This puts immense pressure on F2P players who lack resources to upgrade their cards. Isn’t it kind of obvious that ‘you don’t NEED 32 max cards to play clan wars’ as supercell has mentioned before? But surely one needs 32 max cards if his/her 4th deck were to be of any use. Also, due to clan wars being only 1v1, one would not want to play even with 32 max cards. The rewards are also a BIG disappointment. Before we would get matched with clans based on the number of people who played collection day. If 10 people play collection day we get matched with other clans with 10 collection day players and if not, someone would get an extra battle to even things out. But in this system, every single player is required to play 4 games every single day if we are to win the river race. And needless to say, we casual clans never even finish it (though my clan has around 40 people). This results in terrible rewards. Also that ‘colosseum’, or whatever supercell calls it, is so bad. We had such high expectations from the ‘colosseum’ and it turned out to offer only 1v1s or ‘duels’ which are basically three 1v1s so three times as bad. So many players from my clan literally quit citing Clan Wars 2 as a reason. The trader feature is pretty good though.

Special challenges are very good, however. The rewards are good and the game modes are also pretty unique. As I mentioned earlier, I also like the new cards.

But Clash Royale has much more potential to shine, and I would like to suggest a few ways in which Supercell can improve the game to make it more enjoyable for all of us to play.

Fixing the progression system

This is basically near impossible to fix. However, one idea could be to increase the maximum king level and cards’ level to maybe 15 and make it easier to level up cards. This has been done multiple times in Clash of Clans, but it is definitely a big change that is very hard to implement.

FIX CLAN WARS 2

Supercell should definitely add more game modes to the river race. One more thing that can be done is allowing us (clan leaders) to pick a set number of people to participate in war. For example, we should be allowed to pick if we want to participate in 15 player wars, 20 player wars, 25 player wars, 30 player wars, 35 player wars, 40 player wars, 45 player wars or 50 player wars (these should be like the options that pop-up when we click a ‘war’ button). This makes it easy as clans with 15 active people need not match with clans with 50 active players. And of course the number of points required to finish the river race should change according to the number of participants. Supercell can also make the ‘colosseum’ part a little more interesting. It should be a fitting end to a 4-week cycle of wars. For example, we should be awarded a certain ‘currency’ depending on where we place in the colosseum part of the war. We can use this new currency to buy skins for our cards and at times buy chests (like star points in brawl stars).

Party mode and 2v2 ladder

It was a very good thing that Supercell implemented a party button allowing us to choose between casual game modes. But why not include 5–6 different game modes that cycle around every week. Clash Royale has tens of game modes. Adding 5–6 different game modes to Party would definitely allow us to play a casual game mode of our choice everyday.

2v2 ladder is something that has been requested for a while. It would be nice if supercell could add that.

Classic challenges cost 10 gems and Grand Challenges cost 100. Supercell should definitely bridge the gap by adding 20 gem and 50 gem Classic/Grand Challenge style challenges.

Leaderboards and Badges

Adding more leaderboards can help lower level players get something for their achievements. Like in Clash of Clans, there could be a leaderboard for each league. They could also make level-wise leaderboards which would bring out the achievement of these level 1s in arena 13 or even Pompeyo reaching 7k as a level 11. Supercell can give out more cool badges. For example, there could be a badge for winning a ladder match without any of your towers losing even 1 hp or a badge for winning 10 straight games on ladder. This would motivate all sorts of players to play the game (at least a little bit).

More global tournaments and private tournaments

Clash Royale should have more special events in the global tournament format. For example, the WithZack sparky event could have been in global tournament style. But Pass Royale players can be given a chance to re-enter for free (re-enter not reset losses because that would take the fun out of the tournament format). Clash Royale should also bring back rewards in private tournaments. I still remember how big a deal it was when the feature first came out. But when I restarted the game when Pass Royale came out, I noticed that all private tournaments were 10 gems to start and didn’t give any rewards at all.

Skins and other customization options

While Supercell must continue giving out tower skins in Pass Royale rewards, they should add an option where we can buy Tower skins (even if it costs 500 gems, at least give us the option) or win Tower skins from challenges or tournaments. Supercell must also add skins for each character, which we should be able to buy from the shop or win from challenges. These can be skins other than the star level gold skins, which can be exclusive to the max level 13s.

Introduction of exclusively non-P2W currency

This is not a new idea. This is basically star points in Brawl Stars. By introducing some currency similar to Star Points and making it hard to obtain, all sorts of players would be encouraged to grind for the currency as one can’t just pay and buy. These can be used to buy some of the skins I mentioned earlier.

I feel if the developer team can implement a few of the ideas that I mentioned, then Clash Royale will be much more popular and fun to play than it is now.