shneezn

it is the comment that has attracted the most toxicity

But that's probably due to the top comment obviously gathering the most attention of the people, resulting in the top comment receiving the most replies. Of course a comment with 50 replies is more likely to have more toxic replies than one with 5 replies.

Imho this comment is well written and summarizes the concerns most of the people in here have been having for a long time.

yeh i didnt say it wasn't well written, and as it is most upvoted it obviously means that people want an answer. i am not disputing that.

however the tone of the comment (i can see its now been edited and even a message added which is great - thanks for that u/iDetroy! ) was one that could welcome toxic behaviour and you can see that in the comments. there's even an upvoted comment complaining about me needing to sleep for example lol

i reddit a lot in my spare time, have an 8+year old account so i know that a big part of the way a comment is received is the way it is written and this is a good example of that. not that it was in any way intentional by the author.

doubledude456

A big thanks for finally communicating (not sarcastic, im serious). I just did a long post on supercells lack of communication (no hate to anyone on the team or to you and Seth), and I'm glad we got something. From what you said, the update seems huge, and if it's a success then it would really bring back the game, and renew a lot of our love in it. Now this was what I wanted, you've given us valid reasons for why the delay, and I'm really pleased, the update sounds amazing and I can wait if it will be good enough to spend a year on.

My question is, Why do you only communicate like this occasionally, couldn't you have just stated some of these reasons on twitter and Reddit, even a mere sentence would have satisfied a lot of us.

Anyway, regardless of that I'm glad that we got some valid points and I can't wait for the update.

i touched on this in the main post. but i guess a good way to think about it is like a movie release. if actors etc posted constant updates from the set including plot points etc - would the movie still be as fun when it came out? would as many people still watch it? where would the excitement be etc.

this is different to something like, a kickstarter game where a player has already bought into something that is not released yet, and they want a result. from there dev diaries and week by week updates on what is being worked on make sense.

royale is live and it is in everyone's best interests to create new and exciting update content. i guess a level of trust towards the developers (us) is needed in this case to trust us that we are working on the update (until we release more info).

JCorby17

Hey, u/Supercell_Drew , thank you so much for the info, it really is appreciated so we finally know what’s happening with the update.

But, Since we now Only need 1 Common Card for Electro Valley and 1 Epic and 1 Legendary (Building perhaps?) Card for Jungle Arena, will the team focus on new Game Modes, QoL Changes, and Balancing/Reworking cards so they are more Standardized (which you seem to be doing more and more now, which I really like and commend on your end for doing that. It creates better gameplay)? Or is it a wait and See approach?

Speaking of Standardizing, I made a post on Standardizing Card Stats in game. I worked really hard on it for over 3 weeks and hope you consider checking it out on my profile. Keep Up the Excellent Work man, Clash On!

i already read your standardisation post and thought it was great!

we actually will be standardising ALL troop deployment types in the season 12 balance update so i found your post even more interesting. seth will probably be able to go into this better however - i'll show him your post and see what he thinks.

Fishbrain77

Bro, go answer the most voted comment, why are you skipping it? Why you don't want to face the truth? This game is in decline, and you are only helping it to become more hated with this behaviour, stop all this bullshit and answer honestly

bro, this comment is exactly why i am taking my time writing a proper response to that comment... i'm not skipping it.
it is the comment that has attracted the most toxicity (which you've just proved) and i want to give it a proper, well written response. i've already started drafting a google doc for it.

it will take the same amount of time to answer that question than all other questions combined just because of the toxic behavior & comments surrounding it - i need to nail my response and will reply to that comment tomorrow.

Anonymous_0110

Thanks for answering, communication is appreciated. My questions are:

1 Do you think the update will be ready before September?

2 How much resources do Seasons consume?

3 With the recent Tornado rework, will you take a look at splashers? Especially Wizard, Executioner, Bowler and Bomber.

1. see answer here
2. balance changes & new cards take the most work. settling on the card idea can take months! but again - they are being worked on alongside other things. seth & an artist aren't spending 100% of their time designing a card.
   then artists will come up with the concept and theme of the seasons and start work on the tower skins, emotes & arena at least two months in advance, maybe more
3. yes we have some reworks we want to test for wizard & bowler

MeteorologyMan

Drew doesn’t develop. He’s the community manager.

this is actually untrue!

i do develop - i am part of the game team and present in a lot of discussions for what goes into the update, as well as every playtest session.

every member of the royale team (be they artist, live ops, data scientist) ALL help design and develop the game. developing a game isn't just physically coding etc (i don't touch the build in that respect! although i do write all of the game texts).

DestroyerofClash

No offense, but isn't the role of the Community Manager to manage the community. What other roles and stuff do you do that causes such a lack in communication. If your not able to communicate with the community, what other things have you been doing? A little insight into what you actually do might help the community understand the lack of communication

here's a post i wrote a while back to this exact question.

Dingus568

Will there be any QoL improvements this update? Can we just have a yes/no to if there’s going to be more than just a clan war rework, pass royale & balance changes?

yes there will be more QoL improvements this update

MissStealYoTrophies

I have two questions.

I think that what this post is saying is that the release date of the update is still unknown, and you can’t exactly tell us what is in it, but when it does drop, it’s going to be the single best update ever. Is that right?

Also who do you think is best girl

that's right - release date will be revealed when we are ready!

best girl = misato katsuragi

TheNightRain68

Respectfully though, they aren't really wrong. In my eyes and for many, the last true content filled update was back when the Pass was added in July 2019, and for some even farther when Trophy Road was added in April 2019. The 2 updates that followed the July update changed quite literally nothing, just honestly big quality of life changes but nothing truly NEW that keeps the game fresh.

I don't mind small updates, but adding a card booster or a Party button that just rotates existing game modes won't really reel people in looking for something fresh and new.

this is exactly the point that i am addressing though, the whole "it's not an update unless i say it is"

the facts are we did an update in november. if people don't count it as an update, it doesn't change the fact that it was an update. dev time went into it, work was done on it, we had to do the whole approval/submission app process etc.

if you didn't like the update? that's cool - i respect that.

don't think the update had enough content? that's cool, i totally see your point of view and take that feedback onboard. but it was still an update.

i wrote a comment explaining this a bit more a while back - let's see if i can dig it up:

(the below was in reference to the party button and trophy road)

i always see a lot of people that don't count these as updates ("they're just UI changes!!!" & "we haven't had an update for 10 months" which i can totally understand) but in reality they have helped to massively advance our casual players to more levelled up decks enabling them to pl...

bombs is actually royal delivery! we changed it slightly

Nitro_the_Wolf_

They arent developing towards a deadline, they are developing towards a good update they can all be proud of. I'd rather wait extra months for a high quality update than get mediocre updates every 2-3 months. This will probably be the biggest change clash royale has seen, so they want to make sure things are done right

^{i hate when people on reddit say this but}

THIS!

you hit the nail on the head

Rydogg93

If new cards, balance changes, and seasons doesn’t impact rolling out updates from what you have said above, why include examples of 5 new cards and 7 seasons have been implemented into the game in supercells defense of not having an actual update since November?

it wasn't in defense of - it was directed at these comments that usually accompany those "there hasnt been an update since 2018" saying there has been no new content added to the game etc

edihau

Would you say the team’s philosophy leans more towards improving the parts of the game that we have, or creating new, fun things to replace the old?

good question. a bit of both tbh. we know that there needs to be a big change and some of this comes from designing entirely new - whereas some things just need some quality of life changes to get them to their full potential

TanPlayZFN

What about Spawner game-modes? I know they are simple and easy to make, but they have gotten repetitive. Maybe they would've been more fun if you released a new one as much as you release touchdown. (maybe like once every 2-3 seasons) And I know all about the spreadsheet backend you guys have, why doesn't the season team make some better game modes? (ones involving capturable buildings, maybe pre-made decks for new balance changes in a ramp-up mode, neutral characters, global buffs, buffing specific cards just for the hell of it etc) They only take an extra 15-30 minutes to make a prototype for, and they are much more fun. Hell, I'd be willing to whip up a couple of gamemodes and send you a CSV patch to test out.

I love what you guys do and I'm excited about the update, but I wish a little more effort was put into the new seasons if possible so the game won't get any staler...

simple answer - a lot of the more fun or creative stuff simply isn't possible without an update.

i agree with you that spawn modes aren't the most creative, but there are some that can also prove to be the exception to that rule.

> They only take an extra 15-30 minutes to make a prototype for

just want to point out that in game dev, comments like this simply aren't true - nothing takes as long as you think it will! sure a prototype might be quick, but bringing that to a live environment is a totally different kettle of fish

for example, a lot of what you just mentioned wouldn't work in the current build of the game and would cause out of sync errors for players etc.

Pokerface735

Thank you for taking the time write this post. I understand that the update is taking longer than expected and you can't tell us the exact date, is the update going to be ready before August? Or will we have to go through this summer with no update?

I love the game, but it is getting stale and I was wondering if you could give us an estimate on when it will be released. The biggest part of the disappointment is when we as a community just expect the update to come out the next month if it didn't come out this month. We just get our hopes up only to seem them get crushed. If we were provided a vague ETA (ex. after summer, before September) it would be greatly appreciated.

i wrote this answer to go in the main post but removed it - so here it is!

---

As you are probably aware, we don’t like to give release dates far in advance, or at all! We work VERY differently to AAA game developers, who have a release date set months or even years in advance. This has it's pros and its cons - the pro is for the developers who have less pressure and stress to crunch and deliver an update.

The cons are that you (the playerbase) and me, the bridge between the playerbase and the dev team get stressed and angry that there is no information or seemingly, any progress.

Our initial plan for a May release of this update was unfortunately missed due to the changing global situation, alongside in-team decisions about update progress & direction.

If we had said BIG UPDATE COMING MAY 4TH! And then not hit it, it would cause more harm than good.

A lot of other games that I am a fan of (and maybe you are too) have also ditched the ‘release date’ formula in favour of big sur...

https://preview.redd.it/0kkpgk516r151.jpg?width=1920&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ec32805cb8b1f81622c4278177504516773c6a3f

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...