How to fix Hero's fundamental flaw in Clash Royale

Clash Royale

How to fix Hero's fundamental flaw in Clash Royale

Clash Royale has missed the point of heroes, turning them into overpowered, and frankly unbalanced game mechanics that need their fundamental flaws addressed.

FOCUS

Game balancing

AREA OF WORK

Game Design

ROLE

Game Designer and GUX

PROBLEM

Where do the problems lie with heroes?

Clash Royale, like chess, is all about making decisions. Every decision made holds inherent risk and reward, risk being your opponent holding an advantage in damaging your crown towers, and the reward being you as the player holding the advantage in damaging your opponents crown towers. Advantage can simply be defined as control. The more control you have over the board, the more likely you are to win.

Troops, buildings and spells all hold varying degrees of control in the way they're played. Buildings can control your defence but play little to no role offensively. Troops can reap constant value as they're alive, but you no control over the reactivity of your opponent against them. Spells are highly reactive, and the fastest way to build instant value both defensively and offensively, but hold a large cost you must decide between worth it not.

Heroes override this universal rule of risk and reward from a battle entirely - They're low risk, high reward, and hold even more potential advantage than champions, their companion game mechanic. There's no real spam buffer to playing hero, and no drawback to playing a hero over their default card counterpart. A deck that gains a hero will always be better at very little, to no risk at all.

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No spam buffer and always brings value. Unlike the evolution version of a card, an evolution requires a cost, that is, in how many cycles it takes to get to the evo. Therefore, playing an evo must be an intentional, calculated decision that holds risk if countered, but can reap high reward. Playing a hero comes with no inherent risk. You'll always get back to the hero version, and it's a simple decision to activate an ability or not. The elixir needed for an ability is an immediate cost, but having a hero without ever playing the ability is viable enough to where your opponent is always disadvantaged at having to be preemptive in the risk that an ability might be played.

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Champions are balanced by gimmick and synergy, heroes aren't. Although champions also have abilities, their designed by nature to be situational cards whose value in battle is tied to the synergy they have with other cards and the deck they're in. They're incredibly rare, and difficult to over-level making a decision to using a certain champion a real commitment even before battle. Since heroes are normal cards, any deck that has a card with an introduced hero is automatically better than it once was with zero input from the player.

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DESIGN APPROACH

A simple, flexible fix

The original idea was to differentiate hero stats from their normal card counterparts. This enabled hero cards to truly play differently from their default version, while adding on the ability as a new way to strategically play the card. While an interesting concept, as it enables existing cards to play and syngerise in whole new ways, it was problematic in introducing massive learning curves for players, and a nightmare for balancing teams. Instead, we needed a solution that directly balances heroes as a mechanic without creating extra developer and balancing team work, while also not feeling intrusive or a major overhaul to players already using heroes, as realistically, any fundamental change to heroes will bother players.

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A change without needing to balance stats of either a) existing cards or b) existing abilities

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A change without needing to balance stats of either a) existing cards or b) existing abilities

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A rework or improvement that doesn't fundamentally alter how heroes and the abilities work

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A rework or improvement that doesn't fundamentally alter how heroes and the abilities work

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A balance that still keeps heroes useful but also helps them be easier to counter introducing balance

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A balance that still keeps heroes useful but also helps them be easier to counter introducing balance

DESIGN DECISIONS

Introducing, the Cooldown

The cooldown becomes the central balancing tool for Heroes. By making abilities time-bound, heroes remain useful without overshadowing the repeatability of abilities with Champions. This also introduces a much-needed spam buffer as players must choose when an ability is worth using, while opponents are given clearer windows to respond, restoring Clash Royale’s core risk-and-reward system and creating a fairer, more strategic battle.

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If you play a hero ability, you need to wait a set number of time before you can reuse it, regardless how many times you play a hero, an additional avenue of balance across heroes without affecting the base card

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Simple way to differentiate it from champions, where a champion with all their might and higher rarity can have their ability played per card play, whereas heroes are time bound, making them seem 'weaker'.

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Introduce a very effective spam buffer and reimplement Clash Royale's core risk/reward system as abilities now need to be played more carefully over at any given time, and opponents aren't in a constant state of panic for the entire duration of a battle balancing the playing field. It's a new level of strategy and adds a much needed level of balance.