[2020] [Effort Post] Why we don't like CW2 (as opposed to *what* we don't like about it)

There have been many posts about what people don't like about CW2 and what features they would like to see added or removed. But I believe the fundamental flaw with CW2 goes deeper than any individual piece of the gameplay down into the heart of CW2 itself. The concept is fundamentally flawed because the behavior that CW2 rewards isn't aligned with the game. Until we understand that foundation for the game, no other change is going to be able to improve CW2 enough to be where we all want it to be.

First, a trip down memory lane. In the beginning (ish), there were clan chests. Clan chests were simple. You get a certain number of crowns before the week was up, and everyone in your clan gets a bonus. The only competition was against the clock. In the pro column, it gave the clan a common goal to shoot for, prompting comradery and rooting for each other where there hadn't been a reason for it before. On the con, it didn't add anything new to the game. It rewarded three things:

• Being in a large clan: Obviously, it was much easier for a clan of 50 to achieve the Tier 10 clan chest than a clan of 5. While the clan of 5 could still get a Tier 10 chest, it took a massive amount of effort. This pushed people out of small clans of just their irl friends and gave them a reason to meet new people through clash. Whether this was a good thing or not likely depends on what other clan you joined up with.
• Being active/high effort on ladder: In these dark days, there was no 2v2. There were not as many challenges. If you wanted to push to get the level 10 chest, you were going to do it on ladder. Whether or not you enjoyed playing on ladder, having more people active on ladder was good for the health of the game.
  • Edit: As u/natemymate77 pointed out, when clan chest was first introduced, it was a week long event (done every other week). The weeklong grind was too stressful, so SC switched it to just weekends. Some people liked it more because they had more time on the weekends, some less because they didn't. The lesson that I wish SC had taken from this was that people want to be able to play when they're ready to play, not at an arbitrarily-set time.
• Being good at the game (or just beatdown): The more crowns you could get in a game, the less you had to play to fill up the clan chest. This rewarded skilled play (especially for beatdown decks) through efficiency. The more handily you beat your opponents, the better, faster rewards you would get.
  • Edit: As u/-everwinner- and u/sherly_24 pointed out, this had an unintended consequence of causing some players to drop down in trophies, so that they could gain crown efficiency through underleveled opponents rather than improving their play. At the time, there wasn't much incentive to stay high once you got there, so this led to a significant amount of frustration. The two lessons that I wish SC had taken from this were 1) consistent fair matchmaking is important (even if you only faced an overleveled opponent once in 10, it was still a punch in the gut) and 2) there's no limit to what players will do to abuse a system if you leave a loophole (like say... timezone advantage).

From clan chests, we moved to CW1. If you clicked on this, I'm sure you remember what CW1 was, so I won't recap the mechanics. CW1 upped the competitiveness, and in doing so, shifted the rewards to:

• Skill over effort: While being good helped with the clan chest, you could still muscle through on effort if you were very active. In CW1, effort was no longer good enough. You had 3 shots to win cards for your clan, and only 1 to win a war trophy. If you lost your war trophy match, you couldn't make it up anymore. Even if you had a second battle, that first opportunity was gone. And that was even more difficult due to needing to have...
• Proficiency/high levels across the entire pool of cards: Since you didn't know which cards you were going to get on collection day, you had to branch out from just your ladder deck to a much wider variety. This is good for the game (more variety) and usually good for the player (more understanding of the units translates into more skill, even if you're just playing against it most of the time). The card level gap led to lots of unfair matchups, but there were some level caps and besides this was the reward the SC was giving to players who had sunk time/money into levelling those cards up. Since lots of players were playing with new cards and skill was paramount, this led to...
  • Edit: u/Nevin3000 points out that there was a large amount of opponent variety as well, which kept CW1 feeling fresh.
• Lots of clan discussion/interaction: Since everyone only gets one shot, there's a lot of incentive to help out and root on your clanmates, whether by thorough testing to find the best deck out of the cards you unlocked or by helping a less experienced clanmate master a tricky match-up. With all day to play your war battle, there's time to prepare, ask questions, and generally have a good cooperative experience with your clanmates. Granted, not every clan was like this, but those clans that did try to make their players better were rewarded. This experience made for a more engaging game that aligned with, but also transcended, the basic gameplay.

In short, CW1 rewarded being good at the game and helping your clanmates. Your clan didn't have to be the biggest, due to the size matching. You didn't have to war if you had other stuff going on, due to the ability to opt-in/opt-out of war. You could pick when to play because of the clearly defined start and end point. You did best when you set yourself up for success. Succeeding at CW1 lined up with succeeding at Clash Royale.

Enter CW2. CW2 rewards two things, neither of which have anything to do with being good at Clash Royale.

1) Being in a clan of 50 active people

Let's say you're in a clan of 20 people with max cards and a win rate of 55%. Your daily fame will average to 12,896. If you add one average player (50% win rate), that's an increase of 624 fame or almost a 5% increase. For comparison, you and your 19 clanmates would need to increase your win rate to 62.5% (a feat requiring an intense amount of effort) to get the same benefit. Even if the new person had a 0% win rate, it's still as good as an improvement of the original 20 players to a 60% win rate. Quantity will beat quality every time.

2) Organizing your clan to play their battles as early as possible

Consider that, no matter how good they are, there's no way for a clan to finish on day one. 50 players x 832 max fame per day (assuming maxed decks) = 41,600 fame per clan per day. Consider also, that any full clan with a 25% win rate (26,000 fame per clan per day) can finish on day two*. They can even come in first if they get started early enough.

This means that the differentiator between two equally sized clans isn't their relative skill, but which clan plays their matches earlier. I was in one war where a clan crossed the finish line first by intentionally losing 3 matches faster than my clan could win 1. The link between success in war and success in the game has been broken. There's no need to interact with your clanmates, other than to harass them to play their war matches. Certainly, you don't need to waste time talking strategy with them. Logistics has gone from being an enhancer of success to the sole determinant. As a result, winning war doesn't feel satisfying and the game feels like work.

So, what now? Supercell needs to take a long hard look at Clan Wars and decide what type of behavior they want to reward in players (paying and f2p). Every other decision about what to change and what to keep needs to use that understanding as a foundation. I have some ideas on that front (and may do a Part 2 on that subject at a later time), but ultimately the success or failure of this game rests on whether they are rewarded behavior that makes engagement with the game satisfying.

*Yes, I am assuming clans with maxed decks. My point is to show that even if clans were matched against clans of similar skill/card levels, the game doesn't reward skill.

Edit: Tagging u/Supercell_Drew on the recommendation of u/megomaz and u/Crispycase

External link →