Player base just reflects the parameters of the game.
When Tencent got closer to LoL they probably took some of their philosophy into the mix. I am an ex Clash Royale player and I feel the curve of the game is closely related:
1.- At launch you have a game with multiple approaches available. Super duper turtle to very aggressive, both are viable. Knowledge of the game is also greatly rewarded.
2.- The pro scene gets in the mix and a lot of interactions are dumbed down. Any advantage out of knowledge is minimal because it would create an imbalance in the pros leagues. Tend to disagree, you just could work with a 25000 items/10000 runes database but other issues would arise. At least they didn't dumb it down completely (to the extent of China and viewers influence let's say over NBA basketball), you still need to know a thousand things, even when a good share of that knowledge is mostly despicable (i.e. champions or terrain interactions, animation cancels).
3.- The only thing left is a "windows" game. You have a window of opportunity before/during/after a combo. Any intent to avoid windows is uninteractive and gets the nerf hammer. Obviously games are shorter and probably defined by a couple windows, the game gets a lot more naive and patience runs thin all across the board. Also windows get shortened through CDR or the possibility to drop the load in a matter of a second.
Yeah, macro wins and all that jazz but guys who call themselves "terrible micro, terrible mechanics" still know what's going on in their matchup and might take game decisions on a less than a second basis. Terrible mechanics buffer Q flash style, you know.
4.- Just as CR LoL punish specialists through metas. Champions don't get minimally worse, some get close to unplayable status. OTPs try harder and then skill floor/cap discrepancy gets laughably high.
In the end you reap what you sow. Aftershock is OP but Electrocute is fine and snowball is talent. Well, welcome to your 5 minutes span attention teammates and your 0/2 legit players being reported for inting. Of course a death in less than 3 seconds on your several first ranked games would probably deter any player to keep staring at the game.
It is the same with Clash Royale. It went from a choose your strategy, grow a form to your plan and the better plan with a tad of mechanics wins to "find a window, execute, profit" game. Intelligence/patience/interpretation is not at the core, well you get what you promoted.
Oh, also, for the "pro scene" viewers consideration. Yeah, pro games are kind of watchable because coordinated movement is nice. But just as sports or any other game when you can't dissect a philosophy in a team configuration/strategy is all moot. Yay, another meta champion doing meta thingies and this player is also known because his bread and butter is....the same as everybody else.
It is the game, not the players. It is a lot less meant for giving the player any freedom at all than it seems yet many are still around waiting for a change of the guard towards a more classic approach (1000 hours of theorycrafting would make you 0% better than a guy copying something from the web while clicking on the practice tool makes you infinitely better and this iteration shows on who is going to be your customer). The not so delusional just adapt or look elsewhere so you have arcade players and classic strategy players with a cynic- I could care more but what's the point- approach to the game.
Even guys who make content streams to learn the game don't play with 0/12 teammates and most of the time are able to turn the tides of the battle....through sheer mechanics. Yeah, tell me about macro when you just dueled and won twice. Cool story. Most of those "learning materials" are just relevant to the extent of the given situation which is just lingo for "skill based". Player A plays terrible, streamer calls the bad play, Player A gets double kill through sheer outplay, streamer eats crow instead of protesting the state of the game, in this case free of jail card mechanics. Nonsense.
It is hard to balance such big titles but they take a very controversial road towards flashy and sleight of hand game play and there are consequences. A good shot is a good shot and a bad shot is a bad shot; when any make is a good shot what you have is a bad game.
