Yeah, the business model is explicitly “pay 2 win” as all the kids say, but somehow doesn’t really seemed to have affected me in all the hours I’ve played so far. Maybe all the whales rapidly shoot to the upper echelons of the match making so you don’t really have to worry about them until you’re gunning for the top rankings? Being within a couple of levels of each other hasn’t seemed to have been an issue for me so far. Unit balance seems to allow your active playing skills to trump a higher level unit’s stat advantage.
I’m under no illusion if I were to get high enough that would change, but casual matches let you dictate what levels all units spawn as so at least you can play balanced matches with friends.
But the actual mechanics, yeah, Clash Royale created something really ingenious. It feels like an action card game; the deck building nature of the game has made the unit balance revolve around counter play, with units designed explicitly around combatting a specific unit type or strategy. But there are enough active elements you control, with unit placement and time of placement, which influence the timing of a unit’s DPS and it’s ability to influence unit targeting and pull aggro, that there is an active skill element that can supercede a lot of the underlying stat balance. Revolve8 adds special abilities and super moves that give some additional strategy in there too.
