It’s been a long time coming but in just a few hours after the season reset and I’ve got to the moment when I uninstalled Clash Royale.
What happened?
I have been playing the game since it came out. After a couple of months, it got boring and I have covered why I uninstalled Clash Royale back then in this article: http://fortunovi.com/2016/05/26/lost-interest-clash-royale/
I eventually re-installed the game and slowly started to move up the ranks. Supercell has added a lot of content and game modes thus it was a totally different experience than before. It was fun and it could be fun even without competing. So one could take their time to build up the deck while playing 2vs2, clan battles, or tournaments until your card levels matched the current competitive rank.
After a period of building up, I had a deck with cards Level 10 and 11 (50/50)
I hit the competitive and for a couple of weeks, I had an almost 100% win rate. In this short period, I won 1400 trophies, from 3800 to 5200 which is huuuuge. This is like 3 leagues up from the basic Challenger I to Master I. To put things into perspective the trophies also unlock different arenas. Starting from 300 trophies you get the last Arena 13 at 4000 trophies, thus anything beyond that is the end game.
Let’s recap:
I’m at the last Arena 13 at 5200 points, middle league Master I when the Season ends and… all of a sudden I log into the game to see I’m at 4600 points 2 leagues down. I was insta-WTF!?
What happened?
After some digging, which by the way IS NOT how the player needs to find out what is going on, I did find out that after you pass 4000 Trophies and you get into the Leagues your Trophies are RESET every month with a factor of 1/2 of your Trophies above 4000. OK, got it … BUT IT Sucks, you know why?
Why it sucks BIG TIME
OK, so I got back into competitive and WOW I was obliterated. The game kept throwing at me players with higher level and better cards. I will take a second to explain this. Basically, you have a King level which determines the Health Points of your 2 Towers and the Castle. You also have card levels that are not linked to the King level. It’s harder to fight against higher level kings because they will have more HP buildings. But it’s much harder to play against higher-level decks because their units will have more HP, Dmg, etc.
I am Level 11 King and have deck of 10s and 11s and since the reset I had 50% matchmaking against players level 12 and 100% matchmaking against decks with 12s and 13s levels of cards. And this is almost a guaranteed loss especially on higher ranks where people know how to play. Just as an example if 2 wizards level 11 fight each other on even ground they will eventually kill each other, but if one is level 12 he will survive and this can mean you lost.
Let’s summarize Before VS After
Before: 95% win rate, climbing from 3800 to 5200 in Trophies, this is like 30-40 won matches, felt amazing;
After: 10% win rate, being reset from 5200 to 4600, felt like shit, uninstalled;
How can a matchmaking system be that punitive?
I can’t understand why would a system even allow for players to match against each other with decks so far away in power that the probability of the lower level player to win is close to Zero? Not that there are not enough players – the game is popular AF. It’s not even pay-to-win in these cases – it’s just a blatant all-out unfairness (from my POV as a player), it’s like the game is saying “I decided you should LOSE now” and not only for a single fight but it was like 10 games in a row. I only continued playing to gather some screenshots.
Final Verdict
It feels bad to experience this without even getting a clear explanation. Not only did I had all my hard-won Trophies taken away from me but afterward I have been constantly thrown to the wolves and higher-end players who obliterated me. Basically, there is nothing I can do, unless I pay a handsome to get my deck leveled up, with no guarantee I won’t be up-matched against higher tier decks/players again.
Been playing this game for 2 years straight almost every day. It took only 8 hours from the latest season reset to call it a quit and I uninstalled Clash Royale. It was a sad moment, but the frustration got the best of me.
It’s true, 50% of my opponents have level 12 and 30% even have 13 since I arrived to Spooky Town at lv9, I am talking about 20 match and I lost all of them in a row with 0-3. The worst part of the game is their Support team never give a shit to players suggestion and complains, they even stole my 200gems twice! I have all the screenshots and proofs to document how unsecure Clash Royale is. I had a chance to work for SuperCell and I turned them down last year because I don’t want to work with a company is greedy and unfair to players.
The reason you’re matched with so many high tiers is because the season has just reset, everybody has been put in lower ranks and pretty much in the same place as you. This means everyone will try to climb up. At the beginning of new seasons, everyone is playing at the same time which means you can even find former champions in challenger or masters. What I do is wait until the last few days of the season when most people are in their supposed ranks, that way when I climb the ladder, I will be matched with lower-level people and people my own level.
I can understand how this is happening. The problem is that the developer doesn’t take any actions to avoid this extremely negative player experience and they should be the ones doing it. We shouldn’t “wait” or search for a way around a shitty matchmaking mechanism. The lack of clear communication and the punishing discrepancy in the matchmaking is something many players can’t live with and they eventually CHURN.
I agree with you about the matchmaking point, I have been playing for more than three years, it was very good game, the battle were randomly made regardless of your deck since everything has changed, the game battles are made specifically against your deck cards (I’ve used Lava, and all the opponents always had antilava cards), it’s totally unfair! And after the last updates, no more legal or logical games! The game was broken by Supercell, but I’m still playing because my friends are there.