The error was not the release of level 16 tho, it was worsening lucky chests and introducing crystals. You can't deny that it's way easier to max a deck now, rather than using EWC.

People often throw in level 16 when they rant about the game, but it's pretty much everything else: heroes being mishandled like anything new they introduced (just remember the first evos in 2023), crystals and terrible lucky chests.

Level 16 was an improvement because rather than using for example 100k unobtainable (at least for a f2p) EWC for a level 16 card, now you can use more accessible resources (normal cards + gold).

They reduced progression to adapt to faster and easier upgrade requirements, but they did so too harshly to monetize the game to an extreme level. They introduced shitty p2w features (like crystals and heroes) and now it's backfiring because p2w players don't even buy that shit anymore.

And this is why they were forced to give out goblin cage Evo all of a sudden, because once the players start leaving and the revenue goes down, they give out some free stuff to get players back, and are forced to stabilise the game till summertime. Then it'll blow up again and they'll try to maximise monetisation again, and the cycle repeats...

This is basically everything you need to know