Joined up. ducker_3
I don’t understand how the Supercell model of only letting you play a tiny bit upfront and then making you wait for a few hours manages to hook people in, but apparently it does. I much prefer the [more typical?] model of letting you binge on the game when you first start and not hitting you with a paywall to continue playing until you’re thoroughly addicted to the game.
The game seems fun, but one three (?) minute match every 3 or 8 hours is really not fulfilling.
Assuming you only play when there are tangible rewards available, you’d probably be looking at about 20 matches a day (50% win rate, about 6 chests a day, and another 5 or so matches for the 10 crowns). That’s already an hour a day, which seems at the absolute upper limit of sustainability. Any more, and you’d burn out on the game very quickly. Case in point, I played a bunch yesterday while at full chests just to unlock arena level 3 and the new card types. Come today and the chance to play with some empty chest slots, and I was already kind of feeling overdosed on the game for a while. It’s good fun, but not exactly the deepest game in the world…
The pay to win treadmill is of course disgusting on a basic level, but Clash Royale is maybe the most honest mobile f2p game I’ve seen. The basic structure is obvious right from the start and doesn’t appear to change (why in the world would you prefer a bait and switch, Hanacker?). There isn’t any pretense about what money is buying you. It obviously gets a straight up material advantage. Many games try to hide this by money being used to buy a chance to play more, and then having to use that extra playtime to grind for the advantage. That makes it appear on the surface as something earned in-game, even though in reality it was paid for. But if all these games are fundamentally pay to win, isn’t it better for a game to just admit that up front rather than obfuscate?
Gold chests, which are pretty common, are 8 hours per. I’m finding I usually get in 3-4 chests a day, at most. So maybe 4-12 matches. Upper end assumes I’m doing a number of battles ONLY for crowns. If the timing is such that I’m earning my crown chest while also stocking my regular chest, than I’m closer to the lower end.
I admit, I’m a horrible customer for a F2P model. I’ve spent zero dollars on CoC, despite it being my most played iOS game, by far.
How is it a bait and switch if you know you’re playing a Free to Play game? Obfuscate all you want, but pay-to-win is pretty easy to spot. I’m not entirely sure how much I like Clash Royale yet, and they’re already telling me to pay money (or use up gems, I guess) or stop playing for three hours. At least let me get a good feel for the game before you start asking for money. Once I know I like the game the match structure would probably be fine, but for now every time it asks me to come back in 3 hours, there’s a good chance I won’t.
It’s the same issue I had with Boom Beach - the early game is so unsatisfying there that I definitely would have quit if my coworkers hadn’t been bugging me to keep playing and join their clan. And Boom Beach is decent once you’ve unlocked some things to play with, but the early game is kind of rubbish and I’m not sure why so many people stick with it given how slow the pace of unlocking things is.
Anyone know if the battle outcome affects the type of chest you get? E.g., does a quicker win affect the chance of a magical chest?
The game help/FAQ doesn’t say that it does and arguably implies that it doesn’t.
If 25% of chests are gold, it still works out to 5.7 chests a day. That’s a slight overestimate since there will be some tiny number of better than gold chests, and an underestimate since the trickle of gems can be used to open chests more quickly. So 6/day seems like a fair estimate.
4 matches for 4 chests would seem pretty lucky; the matchmaking system converges very quickly and should slot you into ~50% win rate matches.
I admit, I’m a horrible customer for a F2P model. I’ve spent zero dollars on CoC, despite it being my most played iOS game, by far.
Yeah, I’m not coming at this from a potential customer angle either. I just dabble in these for short periods to admire the craft of F2P game design :-)
I believe I’ve read that the chests are just random, with some frequency based on number of wins (ie., a gold chest every 5-6 wins, and a super whatever chest every ~75 wins or some such). I think those are the numbers I read, but don’t take them as gospel.
Supercell’s games have 100 million players a day.
Interestingly, they say they have killed 14 games in the process of making their 4 released games.
Unfortunately, I’m not uber-efficient and do not start on new chests as soon as I finish one. Hence my estimate of 3-4 a day.
I’m really enjoying the game as well. I find it scratches the RTS itch just enough. The monetization is infuriating but I’m basically training myself to not freak out when I’m playing for no reward, the crown chests help with that.
So how do you folks feel about the buildings that trickle out units like the Goblin Hut or the Tombstone? I’ve had some used against me and while the constant pressure is annoying it usually feels like those units are just tower fodder. Which if they take the hits for better units isn’t a bad thing I guess, but there just seem to be more useful cards.
Spawners have to be used in conjunction with something else. You can’t let them trickle out one by one, unless you’re doing so only to tie up that lane.
My preference is to either drop a spawner and then time it to drop a tank (e.g., knight) in front, or to drop the spawner and then drop a balloon or prince on the other lane while the spawner “holds the fort” on defense of the other lane. They’re great on defense if the fight in the lane happens on your side of the river.
They’re obviously highly mana-efficient in terms of HP and damage per mana. A Goblin Hut, for example, puts out ~13 goblins over its lifetime for 5 mana (2.6 gobs/mana). The spear goblin card puts out 3 goblins for 2 mana (1.5 gobs/mana).
The spawning structures are very nice for stopping big units. Drop a Tombstone in front of a charging Prince and watch him waste his big hit and get swarmed by skeletons, or drop one immediately in front of your tower to deter an incoming Giant. Giants in particular will go after structures and ignore the units they spawn, so a well-placed Tombstone’s spawns can melt a Giant before he ever lands a hit on a tower. Meanwhile, Spear Goblins can target air units, so the Goblin Hut tends to be better against an opponent with more of those.
Good points. Plus if your opponent spends any mana on killing it, the efficiency just goes up.
Like most games of this type, efficiency on mana is the key. To that end, much of the game is about maximizing the use of your towers (free damage!), without surrendering crowns. Battles (that you win) just in front of your towers are the best. Conversely, you don’t want any battles on their pitch, unless you go all the way and crush that tower.
Spawners give you a couple of very efficient options for doing that.
The stationary defense cards (cannon tower, bomb tower) are the ones I’m not fully getting. I can’t see them being good cards, in place of a more flexible offensive card.
I’ve been playing with the bomb tower and I’ve been liking it so far. It’s really nice against aggressive opponents as it diverts most units away from your crown towers, generally wipes out the weenie horde or takes a chunk of damage off the bigger units. As a last ditch defense you can always drop it right in front of a tower. Though in the end it is 5 mana and I’m not sure it’s worth blowing that much.
The spawners are great. I’m at the moment seesawing right between arenas 3/4 (at level 4, so I’m basically at a 1-2 level HP disadvantage in all matches), based on the goblin + barbarian huts. They are all about building a critical mass. Try to build up 3 or maybe even 4 huts on the same side of the map, while playing reactive and cost-effective defense [1] on the other side for the first couple of minutes. At some point the mass of spawned units breaks through, or the opponent is completely tied up there and you can get a heavy hitter through on the other side for free.
[1] Cost-effective is the operative word here. Just figuring out how to defend with cheap units increased my rating by something like 150 trophies. Being confident that you can defeat a Prince with some 1 cost skeletons makes for a huge difference when compared to needing to keep 5 elixir stored up at all times to be able to deal with that threat. Likewise
I can see how that would work well. I changed out my Bomb Tower for the Goblin Hut and like the change. I just crossed over into Arena 3 and man the opponents are so much beefier. I can’t decide how I feel about the urges I’m getting to actually drop some money on this lol.
for the most part I feel as if those structures that kick out unites are great. UNLESS they have a valk; and that can counter a mass unit push that comes from those structures.
Also, I’m not in favor of using them as giant attracter/knight blockers as they will fall quite quickly, and now that mana effecient produced just turned in to quite the mana sink.
I’m more of the opinion use something like a 2 cost goblin spear chucker as a blocker. or the minions summoned by a witch.