Opinion on New Clash Royale Update

Note: This is ported content from my previous blog. It may appear in a format different than intended. It is also from a version of myself that was younger and dumber. I like to keep this content around for posterity.

I don’t know how many of you out there are mobile gamers, I personally prefer PC gaming but mobile gaming is a quick and easy way to get some entertainment on the go. My relationship with Clash Royale is a rocky one. I’ve been on and off with it since its release. It’s a good game and addicting concept on the surface, which is awesome. It very quickly gets stale, though, because each match is just too similar, you’re just playing for different rewards each time. The game is dominated by certain strategies, too, which increases the boredom. But a good off period, from December in 2016 to two months ago, as well as my friends playing again, revitalized the game for me for the time being. They just released a new update, and I personally don’t like it.

First thing first, the new tournament system. The old one sucked, don’t get me wrong, and no one used it. It needed a revamp. But the new one just seems to pay-to-win for me. You get like, maybe five terrible free rewards, and there are a bucket of amazing “bonus rewards.” The catch? They cost 500 gems to unlock. Now, I understand Supercell has a bottom line to make, but 500 gems? Really? Checking my phone now, that’s $5 worth of gems. Supercell is making money in so many different ways, I’ll try to list them all but I don’t think I can. But anything that requires a resource to purchase, either gems or gold, Supercell is making money off of by some people. You’d think they could throw us free players a bone by making it 250 gems instead of 500. Players do have to grind with their skill to get these rewards too, you know. Oh well. It all comes down to the money, money, money.

Supercell is also releasing a balance update, one that lets the freeze spell do damage. This doesn’t matter in regular gameplay, but it does make the game a lot less fun. You see, my friends and I like to spawn as many of one type of troop as possible, and we often clone and then freeze them. If freeze does damage, it kills the clones. So this makes spawning as many of one type of troop as we can a lot harder.

My friend and I tried to spawn as many of the troop “Zappies” as we could.

Star levels are another part of the update, which are a reskin of different troops if you get them high enough, purely a cosmetic change. You could argue this is pay-to-win, because you need to be maxed to get it, but they are only cosmetics, so I don’t particularly care about that. I like they pulled that idea from Clash of Clans, so that is a plus to their update. I also like their addition of badges, which can show player achievements in an appeasing way. It’s a simple change, but a pro.

You can also buy emotes with gems, instead of only straight-up money, which is also a positive change, and I guess it makes up for them making the tournaments so pay-to-win.

And that’s pretty much it! I’d rate this update a 6/10. It opens up emotes to free players, and revamps the tournament system in a nice, if pay-to-win, way. It also lets players play with cool skins with the star levels. It adds player badges too, which is nice. The only problem is that it doesn’t fix the main problem with the game, and if anything it makes it worse. The problem is that this game just gets to stale after a while.

Sources

Title Image: throttlelwp44 on Flikr

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