Supercell's Clash Mini Softlaunch: Game design, UA & Creative review (#90)

so like single player content and Clan and raid bosses tells me that like they were trying to to do something with their long-term metag game and retention because they're having problems like that's usually the feature that you try to kind of you know like if if you look back at what happened with Clash of Clans once they added like social features on on it like it Skyrocket the game so and it's the usual kind of duct tape solution that everybody tries to do when they're trying to you know prolong their meta game even we were trying it a TR life this is no [ __ ] gaming podcast 2 and a half Gamers sharing actionable insights dropping Knowledge from our day-to-day user acquisition game design and AD monetization jobs we are definitely not discussing the latest industry news but having so much fun let's not forget this is a 400 a.m. conference discussion Vibe so let's not take it too seriously hello welcome everybody

deis number 90 and uh we actually two two Gamers our half gamer is not joining today uh so it's it's actually quite good so welcome my name is mat Lich and my name is and we are your hosts today you're also your Consultants because we work on the consultancy side and helping uh games grow from the game design and UA perspective and today we are actually talking about a game again but not just a game it's a clash mini by Supercell and I'm actually quite quite excited um because this feels like a very proper soft Lune the game is in soft line for how long two years oh no more and even more right and you know not like nobody's talking about it he's always like oh well here is flood Rush closed beta kill

here is uh Squad Busters closed beta okay not killed yet it's actually the last survivor of that like uh famous first April three game first April joke that was April 2021 so 2021 that's how old it is yeah so I think the only only one who keeps uh this on his radar was what Javier Barnes yeah thanks Javier by the way I pretty much went through a with ho on like his excellent articles so like great recap for those of us that didn't really play through all these years yeah yeah I mean I didn't even know it's it's actually playable because we usually have these problems with getting the builds to be able to play them uh and this one was quite easy just loaded in on blue stacks and they here you go easy it's great easy yeah easy peasy uh no obstacles okay so we have uh U endgame

design um there are ads from what you said but I didn't see any ads actually there's one placement with yeah but I didn't I didn't see that n placement really yeah nope I didn't see it but I'm like you're playing on Blue STS on PC mhm yeah me too I didn't I didn't see I didn't see the [ __ ] interesting well if you have it on on your um build that would be great because I don't have it anywhere I don't have it loaded currently but I watch it today like there's pretty much like one usual watching that get some soft currency in the shop like the usual thing like the conservative of the most conservative placements yeah so but still it is a placement it was for gold right I think gold of currency okay nothing else so yep that didn't it didn't happen for me which is good so there you go all right let's uh let's actually start uh so I

can then showcase like few creatives because yes it's true they are running some UA it's not very I mean heavy UA but definitely is UA which is surprising for for superar um last time last time we talked about UA it was for fla Russian I think it was just one one or two videos uh I would start it a little bit again with the history lesson go UA and then we can go product okay okay okay okay get so for everybody kind of listening why the [ __ ] are we even talking about this thing and like what it is about uh it's all about this thing called autochess that some of you may remember but most it's not a trend anymore right it's not so this whole thing happened in 2019 before Corona the fabled episode of uh you know human history that next is anymore so in January 2019 that was a DotA

mode which is like you know you know what what I'm going to do you talk and I'm going to play actually oh okay that could also happen um so yeah there was this DOTA Mode called autochess which pretty much created this genre single-handedly uh as you know many genres were created within the you know Warcraft battl net or DOTA ecosystem so it's kind of normal and within that mode uh it was quite complex because it was PC as as like as it was created in Dota and it was all based around the mechanic that you have these characters that you place on the board and then they fight against each other in this automative Manner and all the strategy all the decisions happen before and during the matches of these with the placements with the synergies between the units even denying opponents pcks like shared pool and stuff around that and everybody pretty much started jumping on the band won and everybody was like competing

with each other to release this as fast as possible because everybody remembered what happened last time with Battle Royale where pretty much didn't matter that you were pubg fortnite took your you know lunch anyway so everybody was trying to to everybody's lunch the problem is that there was no lunch to begin with because they were just expecting that at some point there will be this giant lunch so yeah there's um some notable um dates that happened is June 2019 which means in six months there was already team find tactics on PC version living in uh League of Legends client which is the most successful version to date and then there's few of the releases such as from Hearthstone implemented the auto battler mode in November 2019 there's an Ubisoft game there's a valve DOTA Underlord Ubisoft G Ubisoft releases mid and Magic chess Royale

there's like tenson releases chess Rush on on mobile there's that like Auto chess Origins like literally like many of these kind of you know follow-ups everybody was chasing but then the whole thing pretty much ends with March 20120 where team f tactics gets a release on mobile and that pretty much is the game here because uh June 2019 it was the PC version March 2020 it was the mobile version currently if you look at the game's performance there are pretty much five apps uh under this kind of one game and for last 12 months the Western version of these apps did 24 million dollar in Revenue but last 12 months the Chinese version of this app did 240 million of Revenue so that's the thing we are talking here because if we round it all together and look at the overall revenue of that thing like

lifetime because the Chinese version launched uh what was it August 2021 it already made more than half a billion in Revenue in China so this is that thing that everybody's chasing but it's still kind of M nuts compared to something like you know Battle Royale or something this is a different podcast this is a very different podcast it's very small I would say Niche niche market even though it's giant it's it's kind of similar to like Pokémon go where there's just one giant game within the genre everybody else tried to copy it but nobody succeeded so uh yeah this is the thing that uh I guess supercell had on its mind and trying to kind of get into there are speculations that they could be just trying to prep the game for China release and don't really care about the West really I mean because it would make sense in a way that you know this is the game which is uh developed in shangai it is okay it is it is okay then I mean

that would make sense because you see that like same game is making 10 literally 10 times more Revenue in China than in the west so yeah that that's that's how it works and like it's it's very very kind of common that competitive games just fair much better in in the in Asia than in the west like all the mobas just leave like in the in Asia not in the west so that's there and then and this brings us to that uh famous 1st April 2021 which is the announcement of clash mini which was during that like whole three clash games announced on first April that everybody thought was a joke didn't this event just started like today yes it is it's like 6,000 what the what yeah people are crazy 40 I have 40 people are crazy is normal yeah so yeah which brings us there and I think you can go with your UI stuff because I have

so much stuff to talk about regarding the changes so much stuff yes okay okay then let me just change to the different [Music] window why are you attending games from Barcelona 2024 share insights and knowledge have all gaming experts in one place networking great lectures meet new people to learn more about the industry games forum is one of the best places to get mobile marketing Insight see all the conferences and panels staying up to date with the market I'm going to meet their amazing people the experts in their fields inside and networking register now and join 500ua products and Apple Managers at gain on Barcelona February 7th and 8th yeah the game has been in soft lunch from Clash Min from November 2021 so it means it pretty much is there for two years now yeah that's we yeah if we go and check like all

time all time is here so we're looking at the sensor Ty data which is what like November 2021 is this correct I mean they released it in oh no they announced it in no no they announced it in April but soft lunch it got soft lunch only in that November yeah yeah yeah yeah okay so we see we see the peak and it kind of got like 4, 700,000 downloads already and then like almost 2 million Revenue which could be easily for from the from the data that we got from our last podcast uh when we talked about blog gam 3D and some of the the guys from voodo just shared few things which is great thank you very much guys for doing that so we're looking at uh let's let's look at first downloads and like what's interesting so we have this huge Spike obviously in Canada I mean they they those are literally like developers

trying to check out the new supercell game yeah but I mean like there's definitely not too million developers in those are influencers and the usual like their I these are just yet just players um that I mean Clash of Cl like me super cell fans basically right so they released it in Canada Finland Sweden and Norway and like some other countries but not like huge Spike was in Canada then it died almost to like 2,000 players a day then they released it in Chile uh so these all these like small bumps those are like new new builds basically in here as well and then in here they released a new new version uh in July this year and opened up UK so what is interesting is like every time they released a new build they opened up like more countries so why would you do this so you know you see how this kind

of quickly not Qui maybe not quickly but it kind of dies off and you know this again like I said it's more closer to the traditional soft Lounge that other companies do which is you have a game in limited amount of uh GEOS and you run UA and obviously it's it gets expensive so you need and if you are in soft L for two years I can imagine this is absolutely expensive but so that's why you kind of like you open up new countries because then you are going from from the ground zero basically and the the CPA is not as high and you are kind of like getting let's call it the golden cohort from each country in the soft launch and also this is a PVP game right so I guess you also need concurrent users as well and liquidity or is it you mean it's acing there could be possibly bots of course but supercell is known for there you know very good synchronous PVP and I

would guess synchronous I mean it's still like if you're getting 2K or 700 users per day now it's it's kind of a little bit more like 2.5k a day I'm not sure if that's enough to be honest to maintain like certain amount of daus but anyway that's that's this is basically it in terms of the downloads so you it's pretty steady if you check the player base like just roll drop down the downloads up on the left and put their active users yeah we'll see may it is yeah I'm I'm pretty sure that this game is very good retention yeah yeah which we could potentially see same tab yeah it's yeah it is oh it's it's not up there okay perfect okay day 94% day one 606 I think it's kind of little spiced as usual this is yeah this is so we have we are using the happiness

multiplier on the day one which I think it's not but it's still like closer to 40 or 50 I would say and also we we need to remember like I think this is also taking into consideration all the fan booys from supercell which obviously will play every game but I mean also quite decent so even if the day seven is 31 I would say it were like closer to 20 25 maybe is interesting is it's better on Google Play uh the retention on iOS but still okay the long term is not that I mean almost the same so it's like 4% and 3.5% not bad not bad at all so so that's that from from the kind of like data points uh let's get back to like revenues basically which is uh which is where it's here no oh my God I Jesus Christ okay [ __ ] it let's go got to to actually creative and UA Channels cuz it's not uh

not really important regarding Revenue to be honest in sof yeah yeah I know I know but I mean like if your game makes 2 million or maybe three or four in soft Lounge yeah that's not very common that's what I wanted to say also a big difference is if if it makes 2 million in two years or two months correct but then I wanted to Showcase that like after the latest release kind like the revenue went up significantly significantly and then talk about that why short yeah yeah we can talk about why exactly short moment so I think y let's let's talk about the last 30 days and when I was checking it last last week basically there was like no Facebook kind of uh Impressions and anything and now like we see all only only Google but I was looking into this and yes they had Facebook and Google that's

it so thank you very much for listening UA part is over yeah my part is over but no like let's let's let's talk about the creatives because because again we all just get uh [ __ ] so it's like it's pretty funny this one was yeah this we're looking for those listening we're looking just at like the basic core gameplay nothing's fake it's the usual it's kind of little bit like comically Laden or com comically done this one I think this is the best creative they have to be honest um because everything else um is really like CGI 3D [ __ ] I really I mean the cinem this is what I don't okay the Cinematic I don't really understand this like all the supercell kind of branding on the on the other hand I can of understand because your supercell and

you're already like an IP keep in mind the clash Clash universe is kind of Ip in a way that you have you know Clash of Clans Clash Royale all these other clash games that we are looking at the last survivor of yeah but the thing is like the game look so the game has I would say I mean it's super polished yes but it's still like a little bit of like you know low poish kind of thing like the the shapes of the the characters and heroes and units it's like it's not like what I would say like Clash Royale it's it's very diff and this is more like closer to I would say what hunt Royale maybe uh from boombit which is also like kind of like hyper something more hyper casual is hybrid yes but I think this is just a coincidence because it's supposed to look like a toy store like really because there's toy machines in it like

they literally I know it's yes it's kind of similar to work Rumble actually because there's the same principle behind this that like you're playing these things on the board as like pieces so the toy toy WIP that there's literally like you know shelves that you fill with like figurines and stuff in the game true yes but that's like you know the I don't I don't really get the the whole Vibe you know like here as well like the Barbarian cutting out of the like the toy pack yes and also like that would be actually quite good hook but then like there's a supercell logo obviously that's also good hook but you can also get rid of it by the way and you don't need to use it everywhere for [ __ ] sakes because it's still like three seconds of your is very heavy on their branding stuff like I know I know keep in mind that they they don't really work on traditional U model they just like like have these giant but they have to

they have to they have to at some point at some point in the future they just have to because I mean I I can I can imagine like with these creatives they have even even if they're supercell yes and they have maybe [ __ ] tons of organic yes said 90% yes yes but then 10 those 10% kind of in this uh in this context it won't cut it I mean you need UA and I'm pretty sure they know it uh so if you need UA you need to take advantage of everything you can and yeah basically go me it's fine you can you can definitely do that and this is quite nice because again like this actually showcases on this is terrible nowo fingerings on the board yeah dropping fingerings on the board and this I mean why would you use this when you have uh way better and I think like this is quite all no no this is okay so we're looking into these different

creatives and okay we we already see this see in this the class of clans or the universe and let's see let's let's look at this as well again toy store yeah the toy store yeah yeah yeah so I wanted to say like okay so you you could do way more with the board and how the game looks like uh and showcase scenarios want to to do like typical Survivor a stuff like Barbarian King destroy hundreds of zombies that thing that would be amazing yeah I would do that but not not in this yeah yeah yeah sure but I wouldn't do it in this uh in this situation because it's soft L and you need to measure the kpi so I would definitely avoid any any fake ads in this fake stage fake not fake you could do altered gameplay I'm I'm trying to get there because what you can do here is like what they did in this this creative right in this amazing like

funny type of thing right but nothing's altered in just like comical Vibe added into it yes the comical Vibe and the humor can be quite good remember what we had with the to battle Legion that's the that's the thing that you want to like use here this this is quite funny and I I love it and I I'm I'm very sure like players uh of of this game are very similar audience than we are and and I would definitely need need to use more humor based creatives if I want to just stay very close to the like the actual game play and you have the board so you can create different scenarios in on the board it's it can be funny it can be just over op as [ __ ] because like the toad we had and it can be like you know also the uh the mass battles in here as well you can just fill the full board and just see the chaos and the battles

and everything in there here we are Survivor IO creatives it's not Survivor IO it's not Survivor it's not it's just like you you use more uh more units than you can in like real life obviously and it's just you know test it out why not there's there's zero ugc elements we can which can be in this one actually because it's close to the gaml and uh it's not fake so can it can be obviously they won't use AI ugc right so don't worry that's definitely not happening but there's so many more things they can try and I was thinking actually about like writing like few few creative briefs so I will put it in the in the show notes so um if you guys super are listening definitely go and check it out and check it out and then um I want I want to to show you different uh tools not only sensor Tower because I was looking into sensor Tower and I didn't

see basically anything and I was like oh oh well he didn't see anything on the Google Play and when I was checking the creatives I saw basically both um I iTunes app store and Google Play Store buttons in the creative so they wouldn't use it if it wasn't live so I was I immediately went to the Google ads transpar transparency Center and I had to obviously go to the this one and search by Advertiser so it's supercell so it's all the all their games they're kind of running on on Google and I I was looking into the list and Clash mini was on the second position now it's not even here so okay thank you Google ah here's Clash mini CL mini and I think we didn't see this I think oh yeah we saw this so it's a oh really that's that was interesting

hook some kind it's not hook that's yeah I mean we saw it okay we saw we we saw it in the on the the sensor Tower so there's com combination of cinematics with uh game play yeah but I mean that that like one second of game play yes one second of game playay literally yes no okay not as great but then I went here and uh say I I mentioned this um on in our last podcast when we were talking about um not last podcast but the podcast when we were talking about the the creative uh kind of research and things and I mentioned you could see the spend on Facebook thanks to the different laws in in Europe and I'm using ad scan and uh I I mentioned it in the in the newsletter and then immediately got a response from from our friends from Spy game games hey he like is this like a paid sponsored

mention it's like no I actually I actually use this tool just to check spend uh on which creative and um like we could and it just remember this is only Europe and they're running and well they're running uh also in Canada Australia and other countries so we can see we can you know there's you see no us spent uh EU spent no EU spent amazing nothing is in you oh what's happening something went wrong thank you Facebook okay I love it but yeah I mean in Europe you can see 80 160 so it's it's it's like they're not spending that much money to be honest at least on on Facebook it seems like they are not because maybe that's why I can't see any Impressions on C Tower yet because it's just super small okay let's see isn't this like kind of to be expected with their kind

of delt approach to soft lunch I would say but I mean look oh look this is quite uh quite different I mean I mean they what I think they have is just like one or two different videos now they make a lot of cuts out of it which is I mean quite clever and efficient now they have also also game play in here so it's it's quite nice but then we have this oh yeah it's the same thing okay so I guess it's free videos and that's it okay which is not enough not enough enough yes as usual and as usual yeah so I I would maybe say that you know it's it's December so they launched this new update I mean it's expensive so I I would say maybe they're waiting to January to like bigger push because what can you even

measure with like 2,000 I mean if you're supercell what can you even measure obviously if you're smaller company you can measure a lot of things with 2,000 players soly yeah yeah it's easy for super most probably not enough so I would expect this kind of like new or bigger push in in January uh maybe there will be release again uh like at the end of the year or beginning of January just like you know balance things I know you mentioned like there's a like rage on Reddit about like one special unit op as [ __ ] pink Fury it was already nerfed so they need to Nerf some things and like balance [ __ ] and then I would say like they most probably will need to add more UA channels into the mix and I when I looked into the like the whole kind of alltime long uh UA they also ran like Unity as

well and some other some other u channel I think like they would need to add these uh in January as well just you know to get more for soft lunch or for scaling for soft launch for soft lunch yeah yeah yeah yeah okay my guess is that they will wait out the holiday season and then do some kind of a bigger push and see the metrics and like get the numbers from like the new updated that's why we're talking about because by the way they did a giant update and uh yeah that's pretty much it it's either Global or die yeah and I can I can already say like in January last year they they did the bigger push as well and then they used Unity so I would say like I would expect Unity to come back into the mix as well I see Iron Source at the same time as well but only like free free creatives and it I mean it was very small I mean bigger push but only lasted for like 12 days okay so so that's what I would expect here as well

and I see Tik Tok yes yes guys yes please this is definitely a good game for Tik Tok okay um oh wait wait I I will show I will show I show show this T to stuff Yes actually that's maybe some some interesting stuff from the from the past okay there's a hand click that's a good that that would be a hook mhm yeah so yeah why not use this I mean most probably it's old but old game mode with the right B dis it's fine it's it's okay let's see yeah you know yeah I mean like this is terrible hook but yeah is the new update they did at some point yeah yeah yeah you know get you know makes sense let's see this one as well my

God yeah you know that's a nice hook that's a nice hook on chicken costume yeah that's that's a very nice hook actually like why don't you do this as as well like now it's great love it because those things are related to the new updates and I think that's the just okay so it's like you only use the uh in the Crea is like what is exactly in the new update and you don't use anything else you're super you supposed to be like super creative and like the best guys design okay okay sorry sorry sorry I'm sorry okay now I will shut up now oh maybe I won't okay maybe I to game design stuff okay yeah so um this whole thing as mentioned started with November 2021 where the first build of the game kind of went into it um between my

history lesson let me show you the old version how it looks and yeah uh it was a completely different version than it is now regarding the meta progression that's the main thing that's that's been happening because autochess games have chronic problems regarding their progression span depth there's not really like the core game play and just the mic Clos to your face the core gameplay just doesn't offer that much vectors to spend because you cannot really do power progression which they ironically tried so so much but with the current update they completely removed it which just proves the point here um that's by the way why we talking about this this whole thing because after those two years the update they just did last week was so radical that it completely changed the progression of the game because in this first version that you're currently seeing on the screen they actually had some kind of a

light version of power progression you could literally upgrade the heroes and they would be having increasing stats so literally health and damage and attack speed like you see here like they would be actually get be getting stronger which would break one of the main kind of Auto chest rules which is like every everything is even which is not really common with supercell Gams they are mostly driven by power progressions so that's there they tried this it was uh kind of hero focused because Heroes were the ones that you would upgrade not during the game play but before the game play and then during the game play you wouldn't upgrade the heroes you couldn't even combine them you would just upgrade the minis as in normal Auto chest mode but again we would be seeing the usual supercell formula where they would take something out of the market that works great simplify it make it more approachable remove remove a lot of complexity and probably this time remove

too much complexity because the game became kind of shallow and that's that's like one of the main reasons why they did so many kind of iterations and like changing the game so drastically because it is a little bit different than the usual kind of clash Royale Clash of Clans even braw star this this is like a completely different setup here so before they would have literally power progression and and uh the whole thing would work on this kind of a setup of Heroes would stay and you would retain your levels of Heroes uh during seasonal resets but the minis would reset and you would need to upgrade them again from scratch and then um they would have yeah they would have their abilities as you would upgrade during gaml would change so you would have to relearn using them because in different season they would have different abilities which Drive the you know the PVP meta game this sounds

great on paper it seems it didn't really work out um then one of their other major updates was the gizmos update that you see within the creatives they created these kind of static units like Towers or punching whatever backs or something what was it I I wasn't really playing the game in between these updates so I'm just like scouring through the internet what was there uh and I'm very surprised anyone was playing the game in the between to be honest everybody was playing it at some point like you see yeah Spike but then like everybody kind of forgotten about it so there they were still kind of going strong on it so then um they after that one they did this other giant revamp which again completely reworked the game with these kind of three different currency suddenly because there wasn't really that big of an incentive to upgrade the heroes whoops and uh and uh so they would pretty much

introduce loads of other currencies in order to like Drive the the the progression of upgrades so Heros would literally have like special upgrade currency from Level 1 to five then another different currency from Level 6 to 10 and another different currency yeah literally like three different currencies to upgrade the heroes for each five levels okay so that's complicated yeah that's that's very complicated that's complicated so it it was very complicated and uh I I I I understand the thing like they were trying to kind of Drive the upgrades somewhere else because you know you would just like P your resources into one hero you wouldn't have any resources for the other and you need to keep in mind that the progression is built completely different and most of these updates that they're doing is mostly centered around the progression they're not really touching core gameplay that much it's like they're trying to solve the problems of progression not having

enough spend depth progression not being like and you know engaging enough not deep enough and like people tring out too fast I guess not being able to spend much money so on so forth so this is their main kind of iteration Grudge with with with these things the other thing is also that they even added like single player content even raid bosses and clans seems but I didn't see that in in this version because it was removed okay so so like single player content and Clan and raid bosses tells me that like they were trying to to do something with their long-term metag game and retention because they having problems like this usually the feature that you try to kind of you know like if if you look back at what happened with Clash of Clans once they added like social features on on it like it's Skyes the game so and it's the usual kind of duct tape solution that everybody tries to do when they're trying to you know prolong their meta game even we were trying it a TR light at some point you know

introduce Clans introduce ra bosses introduce single player content so blah blah blah so it seems that also didn't work out which brings us to the current day because uh everything was scrapped as it was there and now it's not really uh Power progression it's literally in the update which says goodbye St level UPS unlock the hero that's it the stats one change no matter how many times you refine the quality but there's this U yeah that's the thing I don't get like the all the refine of the like the yeah let's let's talk about the current update because that's the most important one that's why we are here today that's why we here think upd if it has any chance of like going forward so how it works now and this is like I've never seen any progressions like this before so it's kind of very specific So currently the progression of your no like before you start current like how the [ __ ] are we able to get

into 1,00 1,000 yeah 1,000 trophies I mean I'm 20 273 which is quite a big change since yesterday right but at least yeah at least I unlocked the event then I kind of like I think I saw the whole game already oh prob well some some of things you're still missing like top level abilities I'm still also missing those but like it's more like a width rather than depth that you're missing like I think regarding the screen like you've seen everything it's just like I'll show like what things are pretty much missing and go over that but yeah u i I was just playing a lot in a way but uh the early game seems like super easy I was pretty much winning every single game like oh I I wasn't but there is like obviously I just found like this one deck that that I would kind of use all the time with the and you did did you have to Google it I I didn't even have to Google it this time I didn't even have to Google it because system in this the class system

within this update I was like what like I was because I was playing Team fight tactics before and this is how Alo chest works and they remove it before because again they heavily simplify the game class system is the thing that makes uh synergies between units of the same race or class or whatever like you know two goblins give each other Dodge chance or whatever some of in team fight tactic you have like 20 of these in like in your in your board during gaml we need to all know all of these yeah it's like yeah you have Archer is kind of um well barbarians and yeah showing it's just like very intuitive and you know it changes and is it very intuitive [ __ ] me I didn't didn't see that it it literally tells you like whatever for instance here I have a Healer so I know that he has this like healing and shield bonus and it literally highlights the units that I need to put in in order to trigger the bonuses so how how did you give get here what do you mean where did you where did you click like in the center because you

change your deck in the center you never change your deck no I have one deck oh well I changed the deck I have one deck which I changed obviously which I changed obviously but I I don't see the uh those faces there at all where it's here it's always there even during gameplay I can show you like I will I do okay I will share the screen and then I will show you I CH no of course I changed the the deck when I unlocked new new Heroes which uh were not like common but then I I got some rares and then uncommon obviously I changed that yes yeah okay so in the meantime between you discover the main functionality of the game um I saw the functionality I didn't see like like the the connections the icons there okay yeah uh so yeah currently it's like uh I would say on wheels or on Rails uh scripted completely like you get all the units eventually there's this very

intuitive Quest system that kind of walks you through quests uh with with the units that you currently got and kind of it's a little bit of a prolonged tutorial there's also the battle pass thing that works here that that's like mini pass it's called now there's the trophy Road progression which is kind of very easy I would say because you get like 20 trophies per win and you lose three per loss which is just like you move that's why I'm here I'm moving yeah yeah yeah very high the other thing is that as said there's no power progression so once you have a unit you can unlock its Cosmetics if you want you can unlock its uh like emotes or whatever like they stop they they stop uh pretty much remove the ability for people being able to spam emotes now the unit spam emotes so you can bad and uh that's pretty much it and this can increases your collection level and the collection level actually

increases your unit collection because it gives you units randomly but it's kind of scripted anyway so here for instance I'm at level 22 how do I get these whatever XP levels is by upgrading any single unit within like it's kind of similar to Warra Rumble actually where they also this collection level and that's what creates this Loop that every single unit is at the same level because you always want to upgrade the lowest unit level because they're cheapest to upgrade so that's there which you have this kind of universal shards and then sometimes you get like unit specific shards in like special cases but most of the times they using the universal shards I was never uh starred for soft currency I have like 81k gold I don't know what to do with it literally I don't know like I just don't have the shs there like what should I do with it like yeah I cannot buy anything with it in the shop I just cannot upgrade anything because I don't have the shards for it and that's it so soft currency is kind of irrelevant in this

in this thing and then um the important factor here because now it sounds like why do I even spend money on this game because it's like it gives me all the units it it's just not power progress like you know why where yeah so you have this little symbol here called SP special unit which says unlock where shop or toy machine and this is the whole monetization thing yeah so in first Common setup there's none of these then in second there's this count as uh yeah mini which is pretty annoying if you get matched with it yes very especially in the current uh this this magic tile which just like broken as hell um yeah and then if we move forward in the rare category there's hog rider if we move even further there's decoy and chomy and if we move even further there's Dark Prince and uh sailor I think or the guy sitting on the seal and

then there's battle machine so there's actually seven units which are completely locked behind the gachas and there's many gacha pools yes many manys so how it works here is that they have this other currency called keys and you get these key sporadically uh not the the the epig the gold ones or epic ones at all I think you get like one Epic per month for for free player somebody was counting like how much time it would take you to get like the battle what was it the battle no no battle machines uh unit take like six years or something or a free toplay player but anyway so you have the for you basically you don't spend anything so my God please keep this live for six years so he can he can get the get the machine so you you have these kind of skin gas which are nice to have but those are

skins by the way if you have the skin for a unit that you don't have it won't unlock it for you so even of course like why would it exactly it's just a skin so so you see this like little you know clothing thing it's just the skin yeah so there's this like ludicrously High skin GAA which literally if you count the value of this like if I would yeah the chance to get the skin here is like 0.7 % so let's assume that we get it only after we get the guarantee which is 140 which is literally and I was counting it by buying the like best g pack in the shop which is uh $336 that's not a lot one skin for I mean one for skin okay one skin for 300 plus and that's buying on discount okay if you're not buying it's like 500 per one skin per one skin and and and the same thing goes within the units because I think battle machine

also had like 140 guarantee um I'm just not there so you won't see it here but yeah yeah yeah like I have it in my notes and it's it's exactly that so it's 140 so again it's like one unit would cost like $350 to together okay I mean is that a lot or is that like okay I mean it's quite a lot okay but the problem is the problem is that we lost the granularity that I think is like the very big problem because supercell Prides on the notion that their gachas had the best granularity meaning that the Asian gachas the usual you know honkai and like all these other other kind of big monster strikes and whatever they would have this binary situation which it's like All or Nothing which means that you either spend like a lot and you finally get it and you don't get it at all even then you spend it like whatever thousand EUR on the Goa with supercell GAA especially in Clash Royale uh you would have increments of the units all the

time like you know shards of legendaries all the time legendaries epics everything like you would just get small parts of it and eventually you would upgrade it so like you know it would be nice to feel like all the time getting legendaries and stuff like that but here they're pretty much in this binary situation that you either shell out 300 or you don't have it you know yeah that's like that's it binary situation 0 to one that's it so yeah uh let's get rid of the loot boxes in Brawl star but let's put gacha in here but actually it's kind of stupid gacha to be honest because I'm sorry but just there's two units in the whole gacha that's it so you either get this or you get literally nothing you get just soft chart yeah but it's also look so it's seven units in the gacha right each each of those have their own oh so yeah so so this is the thing like you would expect that the gachas would actually increase in pools or like whatever this would be my special unit

gacha and then the hog rider uh whatever when I unlocked another tier in my collection like this would be added here no they don't this is the special GAA just for these two units there's another special GAA for Dark Prince and sailor there's another special gacha for battle machine and if you finish with the gacha it locks out and disappears why why so I don't know I don't know so like the Design's kind of very very interesting I never interesting yeah let's call it interesting because like it's literally like locking chess pieces behind payall like you can have all the chess pieces but just some you can't and I've seen already like Reddit posts on people whining that like there's you know Pro players using these like four or five out of whatever unit Stacks that are all locked behind pay and having like 30 30 WI streak kind of counts with with that so yeah it's not really that that kind

of they know what they're doing like of need to make money but I think this is yeah like it's still again we coming back to the fact that gaming is a business it's still a business you need to make money and we when your revenue is kind of decreasing over time you need to make M yeah exactly but I think it's kind of a as they said like this is pretty much their last dit effort in order to kind of do something here because on one hand it's great that the game is kind of completely can even if we omit the fact that some of the units are literally hidden by a giant pay wall yeah but but then you know I don't know like maybe they're trying to bang on the premise that whatever team fight tactics in China is again like completely no power progression just vanity and like correct me someone if I talking [ __ ] now but I think it's like that that there's like no power progression in that game I hope or maybe you hope at least not in the western one so yeah okay so in Chinese one maybe yeah it

could work in Chinese one but not in Western one so yeah it it works now completely different there were also like few changes also within the gameplay as I said this is the part which actually is locked behind collection level because if you go into hero units they have these kind of skills at the end which are locked by your collection level so I can only use this skill if I upgrade my collection fully and if we go further the f we go the only with hero units the higher it it takes level for instance this unlock at level 48 and then I would imagine like if we would go here and yeah yeah whatever like of course like that would be also level 13 it's not as actually that bad what do you mean level 13 um The Collection level required yeah yeah it was not level 13 it was level 14 I am level I am I am I am I am so it's not that bad actually yeah yeah so then on top of it they have this mechanic with piggy bang which is just kind of like soft currency idle mechanic that's kind

of nice with their play into yeah it's kind of nice but doesn't yeah doesn't do really anything like it's just upgrades this kind of peak uh mechanic and then you have a chance yeah so I was like what is this all about I have no idea and then I clicked on the on that yeah that icon like oh I can actually read everything that's quite nice I I didn't read this is just like an mechanic and like yeah yeah it's like nice to have but like yeah it doesn't really do anything like the game's on the other hand like really enjoyable like uh no I yeah kind of like it if you go into the game like it's it's really nice it's it's very polish the whole thing kind of feels amazing to be honest like I was I was having a lot of fun when I was getting into like the progression that I got to actually um I think it's very well optimized for mobile like I think they did everything they could regarding the whole kind of conversion of the complicated Auto genre into like mobile

first approachable kind of casual um casual Auto chest for the masses so I think like they succeeded within that the problem is that at some point and especially later down uh this kind of loses its charm because the progression there's no progression they're just like you see yeah okay there's cosmetic stuff but you know that's there and then on the other hand um yeah that's that's pretty much it like that's not much to do within the game like when you hear like when you learn the meta that's it it maybe changes like we see now with the pink Fury problem where pretty much one hero was single-handedly killing a whole team of five units it got Nerf uh this this week uh thankfully but other than that like you know these synergies or like these gameplay mechanics that they have there yeah that's it like you learn them pretty fast you kind of Master The Meta and yeah there then you then you start

whining because you don't have the payall units which are controlling the higher level meta which I think that's inevitable problem of every kind of player that moves into higher leagues that like he won't be able to have dark Prince or battle machine or sailor or like any of these like $300 plus units which then will be you know destroying his deck of a free-to-play player yeah but you know you also see the devil's deal on the um on the map there which is always like like what like Marvel snipe type of thing what do you mean it's ch changing all the time like that uh the sign on the on the battlefield you have in the corner the tiles oh yeah yeah yeah yeah the til that's changing that's changing because it was different yeah it's changing every day yeah yeah so it is changing every day yeah I know like I saw it like now sometimes it's sometimes it's not like it's like yeah per day like this day this style can spawn and then uh afterwards like it changes

another day but it's not really like it's not a condition that every single game it needs to be there sometimes it's there sometimes it's not yeah sometimes there is only one sometimes there's two uh but it's you know you need to learn like what they actually does yeah I'm completely by the way playing like an idiot here uh don't welcome to my world cuz talking and like doing strategic decision works great yeah yeah it doesn't yeah yeah exactly so yeah it doesn't go well together yeah yeah but like yeah the game play is like amazing it's really good really nice the tempo of like the matches being very like the autop play part being very very uh fast and then the it's really quick yeah the decision part being kind of on the equal size it's it's kind of very good pacing so yeah that that I think they figured out very well like the translation of the whole cor gameplay from the original 2019 PC version like works great but the progression un unfortunately you know it bite them back because that's how Auto chess works like you can't really you

know like like we seen before like I've seen a game that was trying to put gacha into poker or chess you just can't because that's how these games work they don't have power progressions and this I think is the same example here so yes you can do these things such as like lock units directly under these gachas which are yeah kind of cut throaty but yeah let's see like uh currently um if I should kind of give this some kind of a prediction or what would happen I would expect that they will wait for the holiday period to end and to see how this update works because this was just recently changed I think last week was it it was last week it was last week when you're listening this this week it was like two weeks ago and uh yeah it's very very major like I I I I read through Reddit extensively there's literally players that are whining from left to right that they I mean there's all players are whining always so it's

it's not they they don't seems to be kind of very happy with the update overall but like you know that's expected if their game was changed so radically but on the other hand but that's why you are soft launching game to make changes they they you know like they move the needle right so this is it but for me this kind of it's like because they let go of the idea that we can try and put Power progression into this game they like now completely now let it go this sounds to me like the last each effort that yeah that's what that's what I wanted to ask like okay so is this like the final you win over us we won't be trying our usual power progression you know into the game do as you want we release you into the you know kpi mixer and see if you work better with like just normal equal thing here with the Cosmetic progression but cosmetic with a you know big big thing like hiding locking unit behind gas so that's there um yeah as I said like I

would expect this will still survive the holiday period and then somewhere q1 H get either Global launch or killed no this won't get Global launch man no way in this stage like of the like it's no for now it seems more it's going to get killed or the China speculation well China speculation or maybe it's going to get another half of the year because if you compare the the build between each other like this is just the beginning but they literally said that this the last big update oh but okay last big update and then they still can get a lot more content in in here but because like you know last big update but like what can you do with these like you have seven units or heroes or whatever up like behind Gadget that's not a lot but you can still spend on skins in the meantime you know like I'm not saying that like that's the power progression of the game but uh okay but like what what you spend and the Skins will unlock the collection level and the collection level will then

unlock these kind of hero special but is that enough is that enough yeah doesn't seems enough for me definitely like that's the yeah that's that's that's what I'm where I'm trying to get because now we see like what like sixk per day revenues which can be delayed okay so even if it's like 10 or 20 is that enough most probably no yeah like the progression is very light to me definitely like it's uh as I said like I will continue grinding I will continue unlock units but then at some point probably somewhere here in the Fable Rarity not yeah you will get [ __ ] you will get [ __ ] you just get [ __ ] by you know op decks and that's it sure and you know try to balance units that you can't have like yeah yeah it's quite hard okay but honestly I'm like I'm feel quite excited about this and I enjoyed playing it as well and I mean I'm not very big fan of

outo Chess so U the games like as I said like game's perfect but unfortunately because the environment we live in perfect games don't cut the needle games that monetize great cut the needle doesn't mean they need to be good sure from like game game play player perspective yeah but if your game is good and you know the hard the chance that actually it will monetize as well yeah that's also questionable obviously let's see but anyway so should we should we get it like a chance rating score like okay yeah my chance is 70% this gets killed in q1 [Music] oo okay I will get like 5050 it gets killed uh I would say if this gets killed it's going to be at the end of next year they will still try to try to put like keep in mind two years soft

launch for supercell game yes how long was the brawl star in soft lunch one and a half year if I remember correctly but it's it's like I think this is the longest or not maybe not counting everdale because that was like stealth stealth on yeah but still like the fact that this is already in soft soft Lounge not closed [ __ ] beta or whatever nonsense it's soft Lounge so they actually put like a behind it the creatives and all like more and there you you said problem for them man it's like it's not about money but like yeah but it's like giving this more chances that's the thing like they need to see something in this which is exciting which keeps them working on the game for two years that's what I'm trying because I think early game is really amazing that that that amazing it's great yeah they have the problem of like duct taping any progression on top of that that's that's the thing okay okay like kind of similar thing happened to us with Legion to be yeah yeah that's true yeah yeah okay fair enough fair enough and it's like I was in this exact

situation like every single early game metric looks amazing and then you're banging your head against the wall yeah like oh so your day seven Ras is 50% it's like yeah but that I to get to 100% I need to wait eight months yeah that's the problem okay okay that's fair yeah yeah we'll see but yeah like fingers crossed here but again like I I want you know make the reality as I think it is better okay all right then um see you next time and as you might have heard uh we are going to go to games Forum in um in February and PGC in January in PGC in January but also you know uh regarding the games Forum you already heard like a a nice little um plug from from the guys because uh we partnered up with with them so definitely if you want to see us

there and if you want to see and hear quite good content definitely go there and it's it's going to be live session so you should you should definitely enjoy it anyway like yeah it's now free tracks Mr yakob is now kind of very much involved in the product side of things I'm going to be the on the UA side and and Felix on the ad monetization side and it's quite a good conference honestly so see you there and uh in the meantime please subscribe uh go and watch our live session uh which we did with game Drive uh it's sitting on the YouTube and I'm going to release it sometime next week or maybe the week after on Spotify as well and uh we have decided to actually do live sessions every month so stay tuned join our slack to know more there you go yeah cheers see you there happy holiday thank you bye [Applause]

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