You did.

There are 65 different cards available to you in Clash Royale. You can use 8 cards in a deck. There are more than 5 billion combinations of 8 cards from 65. How is it that so many Clash Royale players are running similar decks? With such a huge potential for variety, why does the “meta” exist all? 

The easy answer is that the cards are not perfectly balanced. When some cards are more powerful than others, players have to include them in their decks and that is the greatest enemy of variety in the game. That is why we see regular balance updates from Supercell. They are looking at the trends and responding in a way that they hope will bring a variety of playing styles into the game.

Balance updates aren’t working.

I’ve compared Supercell’s battle against the “meta” to whack-a-mole. If they smack down a popular card or card combination another one will replace it in a few days. Millions of players, each with billions of card combinations available to them seem to always settle into decks that use the same 2-3 cards.

Adding new cards doesn’t work.

When Supercell adds the next card to the game, it will add 700 million more possible deck combinations. We know from past experience that this won’t fix the problem. In fact, it will make matters worse because new cards can’t possibly have enough play testing to allow them to come into the game already balanced. They will be ignored if the community perceives them as underpowered or they will become the new “meta.” Either way, they’ll be rebalanced in the next update and the hunt for the next OP deck will begin again.

No light in this tunnel.

The problem is the herd mentality among players. I honestly don’t know how so many players end up migrating to a just a handful of deck combinations. Are you all getting your decks from YouTubers? Reddit? Is it just that you notice a trend in your own matches and copy the decks that are beating you?

The only thing that can solve this problem is a player revolt against the “meta.” You have to make a resolution to seek out unique playing styles and intentionally avoid playing the “meta” cards. You broke Clash Royale, you have to fix it.

Special note to any popular YouTubers who may be reading this:
Your influence is greater than most. I personally think you could  help significantly by doing more “How to Counter” videos than “OMG, this card is so OP” videos. It’s just a thought.

Sources:
HackMath: Combinations without repetition
International Business Times: ‘Clash of Clans’ dev Supercell enjoy 100M active players every day boosted by ‘Clash Royale’