devtrackers.gg
Hey Reddit,
I've seen a lot of posts over the last few days asking for more communication on our upcoming update so here it is!
I wanted to address some concerns that I have seen, so here we go…
---
- "Why don't they just tell us what they are working on?"
This is a deliberate choice - I personally don't want to reveal any information until we have a bit more polish and a solid date for release.
As you can see, even releasing a teaser image early has lead to a lot of negativity when the update has not materialised etc.
HYPE VS EXPECTATIONS
Those of you that remember the BIGGEST UPDATE EVER! (Touchdown) know how important it is to not overhype things and we want to manage expectations accordingly. Yes, not releasing an update for a while by default sets expectations, but that's a separate topic. Marketing also plays a role when revealing info - it’s harder to make a big splash with a huge trailer etc if all the info is already released elsewhere.
And last of all - we want to make sure that what we show or reveal is going to be an accurate representation of what appears in-game. This is obviously easier closer to update completion.
- “WHY IS IT TAKING SO LONG!!!”
Developing takes time. Developing a brand new feature takes longer than modifying existing features.
Taking an existing feature, removing it and turning it into something completely new takes even longer!
When we started developing this update - the BIG problem to tackle was "We have so many cards in the game, but players only use 8. The game becomes infinitely more fun when you experiment with different decks and play with different cards, so how can we make players play with more than 1 deck. Oh, also this other thing needs some work.".
As we worked on our main vision for this update, we also created an entirely new way to play Royale that we ended up liking so much we wanted to put it in alongside the originally planned features.
Alongside this, the covid situation has provided new challenges for development, with ALL employees at Supercell working from home. This causes it's own problems especially for those with kids (no daycare = team members with young children have had a rough couple of months!).
The way we develop is very organic, we sit next to eachother and talk a lot, trade ideas, show eachother stuff regularly. While not at all a major reason for the update taking a long time, being apart has created its own unique issues.
At the end of the day, we want to make an update that we as a team are proud of and is up to the standard players have come to expect from Supercell games. If it takes a bit longer than usual, then that is something we are willing to let happen to get out a polished product.
- "We don't want balance changes or new cards, we want an update!"
That's a fair enough response and opinion to hold. But some people do want new cards & alance changes!
In our minds when there is a long wait for an update it is better to keep introducing small changes (balances, new cards) than just have nothing change in the game for the duration of an update cycle.
- “Stop making Seasons and focus on the update!”
Making new cards or seasons doesn't impact our ability to deliver Seasonal content or new cards - our team has people that are 100% working on the new update and others who are working on both the update AND the new Seasonal content. So it is never either/or.
The only time this changes is when stuff breaks (servers, app store issues, legal things) and we need to resolve those issues as a matter of priority.
- “Well why don’t you just release a smaller update?”
Sometimes smaller updates might be good, but we have this time decided to focus on a bigger feature that requires more thinking and development. Bigger features are more complex and sometimes you have to throw stuff out and go back to the drawing board to deliver the best feature possible.
- "We haven't had an update in 11 months/1.5 years/2 years."
I see this a lot on Twitter lol, there seem to be varying opinions of when we released our last update.
Our last update was the end of November 2019. This is around 6 months ago and is for sure a long time to go without an update, I agree.
However since that last update we have released:
- 5 x new cards (inc Skeleton Dragons)
- 7 Seasons (all with balance changes/game modes/new cosmetic content)
This will continue until the update is out.
---
TL;DR
We are still working on the update. It’s taking a while but we will be revealing more in the future and are hyped to share it with you. Thanks for reading - it was a bit of a long one!
---
I respect that this is not an ideal situation for fans of the game, but I can only ask you for your patience, and if you can give that then know that it is greatly appreciated by myself and the rest of the team.
I know there will still be a lot of questions after this so I’ll be sticking around tonight for a little while (it’s Friday evening Finnish time) but will be popping on over the weekend to answer other questions as well (some of the most upvoted & others).
External link →