over 4 years ago - /u/Supercell-Seth - Direct link

Hey everyone,

We thought we’d post some feedback & information with regards to the current meta, Season 4 balance changes and what will be taking place in Season 5.

This post will go through why we are not doing mid-season balance changes and the choices behind this decision.

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Season 3 & Our Learnings

When we initially reworked Executioner, we reacted to pre-release comments about the Executioner’s strength and did an emergency nerf with much less playtesting than usual (no time for a formal playtest cycle) before the start of Season 3. The result was a weak Executioner and most existing Exe players feeling let down. This also invalidated videos made by our Content Creators and made our own balance videos inaccurate, which was not good for anyone who wanted accurate information about Season 3 balance.

We opted to do a one-time 'Pre-CRL maintenance' to adjust Fisherman and Executioner and not affect matches that week, with an internal promise to not make it a regular thing. Any emergency changes are a nightmare from a communication perspective because the vast majority of our players only watch official videos or in-game messaging and aren’t in touch with Twitter discussions or Reddit. To change a card with seemingly no messaging (even if it’s all over YouTube, Reddit or Twitter) is a bad habit we don’t intend to start.

Our biggest worry with a mid-season change was setting the precedent that we can and should do them often. This month confirmed that worry – while the meta has been impacted by the recent changes, it’s multiple cards without an ‘easy’ solution. We don’t want the community to call for emergency mid-season balance changes every time a card is perceived to be too strong but that’s exactly what has happened. This is our fault, as we made a decision in Season 3 and set an expectation going forward that it could be a possibility.

So why not do mid-season balance changes?

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We Need Time for Data and Playtesting

Players began calling for an emergency nerf of Witch & Wall Breakers as soon as 48 hours after the balance update. We have generally never reacted in that time frame, because there is not enough info to make an educated decision. Cards that seem good at the beginning of the season will see their results wane as the season goes on as.

That happened this month – Wall Breakers dropped off from their initial stats while Witch rose up higher. We know now that Wall Breakers need a lesser nerf than Witch, which might need a larger nerf than initially thought. If we had to make that decision after just a few days, it’s possible we would have over-nerfed Wall Breakers and under-nerfed Witch. This might put us back into the position of being asked to make yet another mid-season change – it’s a slippery slope.

This month we opted to let it play out – while multiple cards are very powerful, the saving grace of the season is that it IS multiple cards. If it was just one card in 60% of games, the calculus might be different. But there are dominant decks without Witch or Wall Breakers. There are dominant decks without Elixir Golem or Fisherman. Even if all 4 of those cards are a notch above in power level, they are playing off each other and creating a meta of their own. We feel comfortable letting that ride out for 2 more weeks and doing our best to get it right in one change that arrives on schedule.

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Community Feedback

Gonna let u/Supercell_Drew take the lead on this one here.

Drew: We aim for every rework to land right on the 50% win rate margin but that may not always be the case. We want a rework to come out on the strong (but not too strong!) side of the meta, or else a rework can feel pointless or lack impact. However this month has been a mix of too many strong synergistic cards upending the meta at once, creating a narrow selection of ‘best decks’.

We know that the meta this month has caused upset within the community. Various members of the Royale team read Reddit and Twitter daily and a lack of immediate action on our end does not mean that we aren’t listening and paying attention. We have a lot of opinions voiced at once and my job is to take everything into account and filter this to the rest of the team so that we can make the decisions that are best for the game (backed up with data where possible).

Based on last month’s ‘emergency nerf’ scenario, we decided that even though the stats showed several issues with cards, it was not going to benefit the player base to react in panic on a weekly cycle.

For as long as we started doing balance changes, every balance change has been the ‘worst ever’, every meta is ‘the worst meta ever’ to somebody, and we have a responsibility to the player base to make informed decisions using the data and tools at our disposal rather than make kneejerk reactions to opinions or posts that get traction (as Seth discussed in his point above). Even if these posts and opinions make great points (which they often do) we still want to take the time to do things properly.

We know that by not immediately nerfing cards it can seem like we aren’t listening or ‘don’t care’ (as I’ve seen on the sub the past week) but we hope by being open about our processes in this post you can better see why we do the things we do!

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So What’s Next?

Well, first off, we can confirm two things:

  1. There will not be a card rework in November. We need to pause and get the meta back to stable and balanced before tossing more reworks into the mix. We have a few exciting ones planned and playtested and will most likely be bringing a new one in December if things are settled.
  2. Witch, Wall Breakers, Fisherman, AND Elixir Golem will be getting guaranteed nerfs of varying impact in November. It’s clear all of these cards are warping the meta around them and no one card could be nerfed to get everything back to normal.

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As always, thank you for your vocal feedback, your tweets, memes, effort posts, videos, all of which lead us towards making decisions that shape the balance of this game (even if it doesn't happen immediately).

We will be announcing the final Season 5 balance changes next week, so stay tuned!

See you in the Arena,

Seth, Drew, and the Clash Royale Team

External link →
over 4 years ago - /u/Supercell_Drew - Direct link

Originally posted by [deleted]

[deleted]

the listed cards aren't all of the balance changes for november, we just wanted to get the info out about the main 'problem' cards

over 4 years ago - /u/Supercell_Drew - Direct link

Originally posted by Senhor_Streetglide

He seemed to dodge the unfair crap matchmaking issue

we aren't dodging anything... this post was about the current balance/meta, not 2v2 matchmaking.

RE: 2v2 matchmaking

continuing in the spirit of not rushing through things, we are waiting for more data before making an informed decision about the new 2v2 matchmaking. i'm actually on your side with this one - i was a vocal advocate of reverting it after the change was made, as i felt like a distinct change in difficulty/more grindy 2v2 matches had happened after our update.

however, with no concrete data to back it up, and after discussing it with the rest of the team i came to the understanding that this needs some time to settle.

introducing the party button with other game modes at the same time as the 2v2 matchmaking change also had some effects that we need to further understand before making an informed decision.

over 4 years ago - /u/Supercell_Drew - Direct link

Originally posted by Xam_maX

Hey Seth, Hey Drew, love this post. We would just love to hear more often from you even when you don’t do a bc right away. Please don’t only listen but talk to us more on a regular bases.

got it - thanks for the feedback!