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I’m not here to praise SuperCell or go off about how the CWII update was great. I personally don’t believe they deserve much praise for taking a year just to add a gameplay change. However, there’s something that has been happening with this sub that’s been itching at me for the past week.
We are only halfway through the first week of the update, and already Drew is being dogpiled by volatile and disruptive comments and threads, always making the point about how he couldn’t care less about the community.
This is the post that pushed things over the edge. Now I’m not saying that we shouldn’t criticize SuperCell, because we are definitely in the right for letting them know that the update was unacceptable for taking a year to develop, but the near personal attacks on Drew for something that he has little control over is mind numbing.
Drew is not the one who we should be criticizing, and I’m here to suggest where the community should focus their attention
• The communication I would first like to point out that ever since the update, Drew’s responsiveness to the community has been nothing short of outstanding. While he may not always be giving the responses the community wants, he is leaving multiple comments across several threads each day. Compared to what we’ve had for the past 8 months, this is the best improvement the community could have asked for.
When people start criticizing Drew and attack him on a personal level, it becomes a question of whether or not the community wanted communication at all. We have been tirelessly requesting for more communication for months and months, and now when our wish is finally granted, many people just seem to have immediately disregarded how valuable this level of contact is, all because of a lackluster update. Again, criticize the update, not Drew.
Additionally, Drew actually has less control than you think on these updates and what is actually going to be added and what will get cut. This brings me to my next point
• Drew has no control over gameplay decisions. Here is where the real problem lies
Drew is the community manager. Not a developer. While he may be able to influence some decisions, he has little control over what actually gets added to the game. The ones who have near complete control over gameplay additions and other features are Seth, (Game Designer) and a few other higher-up staff members. However since Seth is the one most commonly known to make the shots, we need to direct nearly all our feedback towards him and the upper management, not Drew.
Here is how I would envision how feedback is handled by the CR team currently. Drew takes the community criticism to Seth or whoever takes feedback, and then whoever is in charge determines what shots to take and what things will be cut out. Drew is only the messenger in this situation, and it’s not up to him whether or not a change makes it into the game.
Unfortunately, whoever is leading the shots seems to not care at all about what the community has to say, and there is nothing that Drew can do about it because it’s not up to him.
It’s understandable that Clash Royale has to make money. Subscription services such as pass royale are one of the best ways in doing so. However, the CR team seems to want even more money after this update. Clan Wars II is now the new place for fully maxed players to bully level 10s and lower, and there are plenty of other examples of how each update has progressively made it even harder to progress, even for paying players.
Do we even need to talk about star skins and the absolute atrocity of how little attention star skins have gotten since the initial release? As of today the only new skins we’ve seen are level 3 rocket and one or two others. Why are no more star skins being released? That would have been an excellent way for SuperCell to get revenue! Players who paid to progress could enjoy card cosmetics, and star skins as a whole provides an incentive to spend money once fully maxed. They could have expanded on this feature even more by adding unique card skins, but no, they have abandoned this feature entirely, with no clue in sight as to when they will add the second wave of skins.
Another practice used by SuperCell is the art of giving while taking something else away. They finally re-added trade tokens to the global tournament, but took away trade tokens in Clan Wars, one of the best places to earn tokens even if you were in a casual clan. Most casual players are lucky to even get 8 wins in the global tournament and will frequently miss the important legendary and epic tokens. They added more gold to clan war river battles, but good luck winning any matches when all of your opponents have golden max wizard hog mega knight rage. They added a daily gift at the expense of quests which gave Legendary King Chests, Mega Lightning Chests, and even the quests themselves gave gems upon completion. The new daily gift has 25 gems in the loot table, but you are more likely to get a useless gold chest for 3 days in a row.
Those were only just a few of the many examples of what we have been consistently criticizing SuperCell for, and yet nothing is being done about it. As new cards get added, progression slowly gets worse and worse, but nearly nothing is being done about it. Why are all of our suggestions being cast to the side? The team is clearly capable of making changes with the millions they make per month, yet they refuse to do so.
We need to take our criticism directly to the CR team. We need to let the upper management know that the current lead designers are not working in the best interest of the community and are breaking the mission statement of wanting to make games that will be remembered for years. Instead of making Clash Royale an enjoyable and fair experience, they force players to spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars to even have a chance at being successful and fully enjoying the game modes. If this behavior continues, the game will fall dead flat on top of it’s filthy monetization and progression system and lack of variety. That is the community’s promise.
Let me be clear, I’m not in any way encouraging to personally attack the upper management, and no one there should be fired. However, there are certain employees that need a very serious slap on the wrist for the way they have been managing the game. The dissonance between the community and the dev team is closing in to be by far the worst I have seen, almost on parallel with EA.
This all has to stop. There needs to be a change, and it needs to happen now. This game has too much potential to be wasted away as much as it has already.
•** What we can do**
Clash Royale is in my opinion one of the most outstanding real-time strategy games of the mobile genre, and to see it continually mottled down by the game directors and upper management is disheartening and incredibly frustrating. Submitting feedback knowing it will just get tossed in the trash can in order to make way for the next heavily monetized feature is completely unacceptable, and we cannot let it stand any longer.
It is up to the community to make the change. Don’t just say something, do something. Contact the upper management of SuperCell. Spread the word that there needs to be a new direction of how the game is being handled. Little has been done to fix progression and other major issues that have been in the game for years. It’s finally time to stand up against the current CR team and tell them that we want a change. We can’t let the game lose its potential after everything that has been built over all these years. Stop the CR team from snuffing out the flame of Clash Royale, or it may not be relevant in the coming years.
Tl;Dr: Drew is just the messenger. He is submitting our feedback to the lead developers and Seth the game designer, but they are the ones choosing to ignore our feedback in order to pave the road for more monetization. As a community we should not let this be the case, and we should contact SuperCell’s upper management to request for them to change the direction of what features are being added or cut. The current lead developers are prioritizing to find every possible way to sniff money out of their players over designing enjoyable features, which is completely unacceptable and needs to be changed.
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