The Trophy Inflation Crisis

As you all know, the Brawl Stars developer team recently reworked trophy gains and losses that made it much easier to gain trophies. At first and to most players, this seems like a good thing: more trophies earned for winning and less lost from losing! However, the recent increase in trophies has led to a problem that was bound to occur: trophy inflation.


What do I mean by trophy inflation?

In the most basic terms, inflation occurs when there is too much money to go around that it outpaces economic growth, thus lowering the value of that currency. In the case of Brawl Stars, the amount of trophies that can be earned outpaces the trophies that are lost, thus leading to trophies losing value.

If you aren’t aware of the new trophy balances, I suggest you check them out here.

The recent trophy balance increased the amount of trophies earned by a substantial amount. For example, a brawler above 500 used to earn just 5 trophies per win and lose 6 per loss, thus presenting a risk. However, a brawler above 500 now earns 8 trophies per win while only losing 6. Essentially, the changes made it too easy to gain trophies and much harder to lose them. The risk of playing higher brawlers has gone away.


Why did the dev. team do this?

The Brawl Stars team told us in the trophy balancing Reddit post that they did this in order to speed of trophy progression. They thought that it was too difficult to reach 500 trophies on a brawler and was therefore too difficult to get Star Points. All in all, these changes were a response to the elimination of season rewards and the painstakingly slow process of getting Star Points. Their goal in changing the trophy rewards was to allow more players to get more trophies above 500 so that they can earn more Star Points when the season resets. Although I do believe that the Star Points system needed a revamp, I do not think this was the right approach, because this created a massive problem.


Why is this a problem?

You may be wondering, why is it a problem that you gain so much more trophies than you lose? While this may seem like a good thing for everyone without a 500 trophy brawler, it is not good for the players with multiple 500+ brawlers. The new system motivates lower players to push one or two brawlers heavily while leaving the others untouched just to get their hands on some Star Points. If you have played brawlers in the higher trophy ranges recently, you may have noticed that 1), your opponents may not be as good as they usually are, or 2), your random teammates are not as good as they should be in that trophy range. This is because of the fact that many lower trophy players increasingly push one or two brawlers above the 500 mark due to the massive trophy gain increase. Take a look below, these are just three examples of what I am talking about:

The fact of the matter is that getting a brawler to 500 trophies or above isn’t a challenge anymore and isn’t as rewarding as it used to be. Imagine you are a long time player who grinded to the 10,000 total trophies mark and have several 500 or up brawlers. Suddenly, one day you log on and realize that players at 5 or 6 thousand trophies have brawlers at 600 trophies. The new system delivers too much reward at too little risk, and it is a massive problem. Especially since the highest rank (20) only requires 500 brawler trophies, the new trophy system is way too rewarding and speeds up progression too quickly. The changes encourages a player to push up a few brawlers while leaving others untouched, which will harm the game overall.


In the end, while the new trophy balancing may seem rewarding and exciting at first, the game is not ready for such drastic progression increases this early on. Some may say that they must make it easier for new players to progress over time such as in Clash of Clans. However, keep in mind that Clash of Clans had dozens of updates that each slowly increased progression speeds throughout years. Brawl Stars, on the other hand, has only been out for half a year and does not have the content necessary for such rapid progression speeds. Yes, players will now be able to gain Star Points faster, but overall, the trophy inflation is detrimental to the game and makes it a lot less fun and rewarding to play.


Let me know if you agree with my view on this and let me know your thoughts. Please do not simply disagree or agree based on your trophy range. Thanks for reading, and Brawl on!

2 thoughts on “The Trophy Inflation Crisis

  1. Totally agree! I found it so much less satisfying to get a brawler to 500. I liked it when it was hard, it made it so much more fun. Just the thrill of getting a brawler to 500 is now made so much easier.

    Liked by 1 person

  2. i totally agree almighty, its really hard when I am a veteran player and play random matchmaking with a 600 elprimo but has no game sense. Supercell needs to fix this immediately!!

    Like

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