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    Home Unlabelled Clash Royale Gamemode idea: The Storm! You and your opponent can only see your own side of the map

    Clash Royale Gamemode idea: The Storm! You and your opponent can only see your own side of the map

    July 01, 2020

    Clash Royale Gamemode idea: The Storm! You and your opponent can only see your own side of the map

    Gamemode idea: The Storm! You and your opponent can only see your own side of the map

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 03:04 PM PDT

    Elixir Golem Star Level Idea: DARK ELIXIR GOLEM

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 06:17 AM PDT

    Loot boxes & Clash Royale, 3 years later. Are Supercell's business practices predatory?

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 07:54 AM PDT

    I hope you appreciate this post because while I really wanted to bring up this topic, it also really goes far outside of my comfort zone.

    Small caveat: I could not find anyone experienced in this topic and familiar with Clash Royale. I hope I didn't make mistakes here.

    A few years ago, there was a lot of discussion around loot boxes due to new regulatory laws passing in many countries. This might get a bit philosophical, but I will try to provide good examples. The tl;dr is that I don't believe Clash Royale's business models are predatory, but I acknowledge some of the aspects are nuanced. I will format what I believe are issues in bold italic. Let's talk about it:

    1: Anything that is obtained through regular gameplay is not considered. So what are the things in Clash Royale that are purchased with real money?

    • Gems
    • Some special offers
    • Pass Royale

    2: Here are the predatory exercises that I will look over. I will later judge whether Clash Royale applies them or not.

    • Can Clash Royale's purchases be considered gambling? Does Clash Royale apply Skinner boxes?
    • Dynamic odds & arbitrarily increasing your odds: Is it just an illusion of control?
    • Flexible prices & Multipliers: Is the value of Clash Royale offers misleading?
    • Is gameplay rigged to invoke purchases?

    So let's start clearing things up. As a precautionary note, this only talks about purchasable items. Items that can be obtained through normal gameplay, even expensive gem purchases, can apply to the topic about the game's addictiveness, however, not about its business practices.

    0. Let's talk a little about the legal side of it.

    A few years ago, scary news for game developers and companies dependent on microtransactions came round. Policies against loot boxes were being discussed, in many versions of which they would be treated the same as gambling. This, however, has several obvious issues. The main one is that in many places around the world, gambling is illegal. Not just to facilitate, but also to participate in. Sending gamers to prison for buying loot boxes would just be the most ridiculous thing and turn any country upside down. Items in Clash Royale are just pixels without real-world value, which is a clear difference from gambling.

    A different version of this was that games with loot boxes should be restricted to 18+ or 21+. This would affect Clash Royale, as it is intended for an audience of 13 years old or older. There are major issues with restricting games based on loot boxes - it is the same as restricting pieces of art, i.e. "music with vulgar lyrics can't be sold to minors". Laws like these always caused more harm than good, so they didn't stay in the USA for long.

    Selling the non-random part of a loot box for money with, quote-unquote, "a free loot box", is what a lot of titles are already doing to abide by some laws, for example in China. Clash Royale did this: in China, instead of selling a Super Magical Chest, they would sell 4000 gold and a "free Super Magical Chest but with no gold". This is a non-reliable loophole.

    Let's just be honest: companies had it coming. The legislation that, in the end, will most likely pass in many places around the world, is removing loot boxes and any kind of monetization that leads exclusively to random outputs (i.e. you pay to enter a dungeon, but the dungeon has random loot) and urging developers to stop making it a lotto system. So if you want to sell items in a shop, you sell items in a shop. You don't sell a "chance" of an item, you just sell the item.

    More thoroughness on Clash Royale's specific case in the next points. In the title, I mentioned Supercell. Let's take a moment to look into the monetization of other Supercell games and how they abide by this principle.

    • Brawl Stars only sells gems for real money. While the brawl boxes are randomized loot boxes, they are a part of the game experience and cannot be directly purchased through money. You can purchase gems and then invest them into the boxes, or the pass that has them. This seems like the odds are just pushed one step further in the chain, but firstly, gems are a part of regular progression and you can get an unlimited number of them in the long run, and secondly, they can also be spent with no odds further in the chain, like for buying skins or coins.
    • Clash of Clans sells gems. It also sells special offers and a pass with resources, magic items, a hero skin, village themes, and boosts. There are no odds in any of these. On another front, however, Clash of Clans' value multipliers are totally arbitrary most of the time.
    • Boom Beach sells diamonds and two "services", none of which introduce randomness. I haven't played it for some time, however, so I can't confirm this is up-to-date.
    • I don't play Hay Day or Hay Day Pop.

    Now let's get back to what this subreddit is about: Clash Royale

    1. Gambling & Skinner Boxes: Does Clash Royale apply them?

    TL;DR: This is a concern.

    So what is gambling? Gambling generally means putting money into something with no promised outcome. Skinner boxes can be considered a type of gambling. The original experiment from the 50s which involved rats was pretty much "press the button and you will sometimes get a significant reward". This is more a test of addiction, however: it resembles the opening of a lot of magical chests (skinner boxes) and having a chance to get a legendary (reward). Okay, so how does this apply to Clash Royale?

    • First and most simple, gems. Gem offers have a consistent price in the shop, so they are not a concern.
    • Second, Pass Royale. Things become complicated here. Pass Royale offers the following things every season that I will mention in 3 bullet points below.
    • Crown Road: When you buy Pass Royale, you know in advance the exact amount of cards from each rarity that you will be getting from Crown Road.
    • Chest queueing: No randomness is present here and ways to track your chest cycle are available. Also, chest queueing has no equivalent value established elsewhere in the game.
    • Free challenge entries: This is a major concern. Challenges vary wildly between seasons and players are given no warning on what the rewards and formats will be. So, in a way, Pass Royale's gambling aspect comes from customers not knowing the true content of challenges if they purchase pass royale early.
    • Moreover, the value of the rewards from challenges is not established. Challenge rewards include chests with integrated odds. For example, based on refund gold value, a Magical Chest you got thanks to Pass Royale's unlimited reentries could contain ~20000 extra gold if it happens to have a legendary.
    • Lastly, Shop Offers. Here is something no one seems to notice: Royal chests from special offers do line up with those purchasable with gems; offers say "Legendary Arena" and Royal Chests say "ARENA 13". HOWEVER, judging from the info tab, it appears that those chests actually have fewer cards (EXAMPLE) but this is only visual. u/Supercell_Drew, please tell the team to fix it, it's important to not get monetization info wrong even on a minor scale.
    • Besides this, offers, unfortunately, have some skinner boxes in them. There were four such offers in Season 12 (skinner boxes are in bold):

    Mega Lightning Chest & 35000 gold for 22BGN (x4)

    Legendary King's Chest, Magical Chest, Epic Chest & 125000 gold for 43BGN (x4)

    Magical Chest, epic token & 15000 gold for 11BGN (x3)

    Magical Chest, Giant Chest, Legendary Chest, Lightning Chest, 75000 gold & 1250 gems for 43BGN (x3)

    • Let's expand a little on what makes these particular chests a pain point (I'll look into their Arena 13 value):

    Lightning Chest: Its rarity distributions are set, however, sometimes it has a legendary card (1.05%) and sometimes it does not. So the gold value of the cards in such a chest is 2560 with a 1.05% gamble that it is 22555. Not OK to directly monetize.

    Giant Chest: This one and the following two do not have set distributions. The worst one will have 264 commons, 65 rares, no epic, and no legendary. The best one will have 261 commons, 66 rares, an epic, and a legendary (2%). So, in gold value for the cards, 3570 is the lower bound while 24105 is the upper bound. This is a 2% gamble that the chest quadruples in value. Not OK to directly monetize.

    Magical Chest: The worst one will have 66 commons, 18 rares, 10 epics, and no legendary. The best one will have 63 commons, 19 rares, 11 epics, and a legendary (20%). So between 6230 and 26775 gold value of the cards in the chest. This is a 20% gamble to quadruple the chest in value. Not OK to directly monetize.

    Mega Lightning Chest: The worst Mega Lightning Chest will have 1 less rare and 1 less epic. This is minimal, but the case is not the same in low arenas where legendaries are not guaranteed. Overall, it is not OK to directly monetize.

    • But what about not knowing in advance the cards you will get? It would be silly to say this is an issue. Clash Royale assigns the same value to any card of a given rarity. Nowhere in the game are they sold at different prices. If we go with the opposite argument then things like packets with Skittle candies would now need to have a ticket saying the number of each candy color they have.

    2. Dynamic odds & arbitrarily increasing your odds: Illusion of control?

    TL;DR: Not a concern.

    • This is a major issue for a lot of games, but Clash Royale is free of issues here. Chests that appear in offers don't have dynamic odds when it comes to getting cards of different rarities. There aren't the likes of rigged spinning wheels of fortune in other mobile games: value is fixed.
    • So we should look into chests' abilities to change between cards of the same rarity. We only have this in the following chests: Lightning, Mega Lightning, Fortune, and Legendary King's Chest (& King's Chest). It is also in Pass Royale. All of these chests, except for the classic Fortune chest, are sometimes used in offers that cost money. However, they really do increase your chance of getting the cards you want. How are the odds improved in your favor is a different topic (which I've been making a post on) and strikes have a risk ingrained. The important thing is that with such increased odds, this is no longer an "illusion" of control.

    3. Flexible prices & multipliers: Are offers misleading?

    TL;DR: Probably not a concern, although it can be communicated better.

    • Again, let us tackle them one by one. Supercell has consistent prices for everything they permanently offer in real-life money, so on this front, there are no issues.
    • Special deals that cost money are introduced on a schedule with no consideration of your playing habits. Most special deals can only be purchased once. Therefore, special offers themselves are not a concern.
    • The most important question is that of whether value multipliers are misleading. There is no information about the metric used. I am unsure - I can say for sure it is based on gems and I think the real basis is the wagon of gems as I get pretty close estimates when I use it. Because of things not being clear, when the community is outraged and shits on offers, I often see posts criticize them like "This 4x offer actually only gives 3.72 times more value. Liars!". More clear communication of this would be good, perhaps even in-game or in the FAQ.
    • Skinner boxes also aggravate this in the offers that have them. All of the Skinner boxes, except for the Lightning Chest, no longer have an equivalent game value anywhere in the game, so what do we even use? Worst case scenario? Best case scenario? Expected value? Median? Mode?
    • Using gems as a metric is a flaw as there is no established gem/money cost of trade tokens anywhere in the game. This further increases the uncertainty of actual multipliers in some of the offers, even though there are no odds related to trade tokens. Basically, trade tokens could as well be really overpriced and thus not sold alone, but thrown in offers to inflate the cost/multipliers. This is also how Clash of Clans' multipliers have random values: because the items (usually magic items) with no set value are literally everywhere in them.
    • Another aspect of it is whether prices discriminate against any country. I only know the prices for my country so I cannot help here. Adjustments between countries are not easy since the world changes and countries have different purchase power (i.e. a purchase here would be 4x as much of a burden as in the USA). The more important thing is that ratios of prices between different countries should closely resemble each other.

    4. Rigged gameplay to invoke purchases?

    TL;DR: No evidence / debatable.

    • Whether the game is psychologically hostile is a different question.
    • The extent to which we have this is matchmaking. Clash Royale's matchmaking system is based on your trophy count. In the past, devs have said that your losing streak is also taken into account, however, this might have been removed since. Something that stayed, however, is top ladder rooms - to reduce sniping on the top ladder, its matchmaking is organized by putting players in rooms and assigning the matches at once.
    • There is, however, another aspect to matchmaking that might be at issue here. In sub-4000 trophies, you can be matched against bots. 100% PROOF HERE. Bots are fairly obvious but have different AIs. It looks like about 1 in 3 of a players' matches under 4000 is against bots. Apparently, they give easier wins and show up in the more important areas, like between arenas. They aren't made obvious, their names look normal, the only guaranteed clues come up when you delve into their profiles. Now is this related to purchases? It depends on how you look at it - "They make sub-4k easy so then they hit a paywall and purchase because of frustration" is not an ideal argument as gameplay below 4k is made less frustrating by this. Losing is what players hate the most, but bots soak up losses without caring and thus giving players a better experience. That is until 4k is hit where the non-zero-sum Elo makes it so you can lose much more often than you win. Is this really an issue? I think bots aren't an issue but the situation between 4k and 6k is. What do you think?
    • Many players have complained that matchmaking is rigged to match you against counter decks. There is, however, no evidence. The best statistical analyses made, like this one, were in favor of there being no hidden factors. Several times, the developers publicly denied having secrets in the matchmaking algorithm. Devs might be quiet, but they are truthful. They did admit to bots below 4000, for example.

    ​

    Let's separate our feelings from the facts and discuss this. Clash Royale is pretty dependent on loot boxes in its current economy, but I believe it is close to also having a monetization with no legal issues in the foreseeable future. I won't discuss any possible solutions, but I hope I did a good job of presenting the problem and finding where Clash Royale's monetization needs to improve.

    submitted by /u/Mew_Pur_Pur
    [link] [comments]

    A spawner mode of one of the most hated cards in the game. I LiTeRaLlY cAn'T eVeN

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 11:31 AM PDT

    Found a phone that's smaller than a french fry and started playing clash on it xD

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 09:51 PM PDT

    The moment you put an Xbow deck

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 01:12 AM PDT

    Bad idea: E barbs replacing normal barbs with a battle ram!

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 09:21 PM PDT

    Are you winning son ?

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 07:44 AM PDT

    [LADDER GLITCH] Replay is in Tournament Standard Mode, Appearing to affect the game’s outcome

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 04:55 PM PDT

    One year without big client updates: Happy Birthday, no-update Royale!

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 03:06 PM PDT

    1st July 2019: Introduction of Pass Royale and seasons - exactly one year ago. Wow. Will we get the good old times back?

    submitted by /u/anonymer_unbekannter
    [link] [comments]

    Supercell should add a Playbar in the Replays So that it becomes easy to watch any part of the Replay without Fast Forwarding.Morever, they should add a Share button to easily share replays on any platform. Something like this ��

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 10:52 PM PDT

    Drew gives a clue about Season 13 theme ��

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 05:08 PM PDT

    Should the Trophy Road be extended?

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 06:51 PM PDT

    I was thinking lately because the trophy progression in Clash Royale isn't really going anywhere. In Brawl Stars, the highest trophies keeps getting bigger, and now its up to 50,000 Trophies. Every season in CR, we just reset and unless you get more level ups, you stay at around the same place in trophies. Even the top finishes aren't getting any higher.

    There should be new arenas to fill up 4000-5000 and let Leagues start at 5000 Trophies. This could let players reach new bests and make Leagues feel special rather than just a huge arena everyone is in. People should be able to advance in the game not just because of how fast they can level up their deck.

    It may sound controversial, but this would allow more trophy pushing and and honestly give people an reason to play ladder rather than just pushing a few Leagues to collect some rewards then stopping for the rest of the season.

    submitted by /u/WakkkaMole
    [link] [comments]

    This clan has a system where you pay someone to be promoted, isn’t this against TOS?

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 05:13 PM PDT

    I know my deck will make most of you nauseous but it’s my off-meta baby and it got me to 5600–I know thats low but it’s good for me, just posting to celebrate =)

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 02:42 PM PDT

    I feel like this would be more useful than "Thanks"

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 02:41 PM PDT

    One of my favorite moments while playing doubles with my bro.

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 09:35 AM PDT

    Lucky?

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 10:00 PM PDT

    I think the miner was meant to hit the bomber, and supercell couldn't be bothered to fix it

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 02:34 PM PDT

    Bandit went *poof*

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 07:16 PM PDT

    I changed my deck from Log Bait to 2.9 and my opponents deck started to change drastically, so tired of these rigged matchups.

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 02:00 PM PDT

    Why so much Golem in 5K-6K this season???

    Posted: 30 Jun 2020 06:09 AM PDT

    I swear there here are some moments when 3 of 6 matchups are against Golem…

    Then, it disappears for 3/4 games, then there it goes again. It's appearing really WAY MORE than the 12% that it's supposed to be in the game (according to Royale API).

    ClassicGolems with NW most of them, but also a LOT with no-matter-what support cards —those really are not very good and I can win some of those.

    I know Supercell does NOT care about the mid-high ladder, but this season, it's just ridiculous how much Golem is played, don't you think?

    submitted by /u/wolfynn
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