šŸ•µ Act Casual ā€“ How do you go from being a very active player to somewhat casual?

Itā€™s the mentality as much as anythingā€¦

Wars may only be 15 minutes a day, but if your competitive streak is such that youā€™re never quite happy with your performance, itā€™s going to be drive you to spending more and more time on thinking about ways to improve and team compositions etcā€¦ And more time in game practicing, trying to help the rest of your alliance and on trying to do absolutely everything you can to extend your roster further.

At some point, making peace with your personal contributions is a huge part of stopping the game from taking control of you.

If youā€™re never ā€œthat guyā€ in the first place? Iā€™m honestly extremely happy for youā€¦ But this thread is mostly about those of us that were (or still are) ā€œthat guyā€ and sharing ideas on breaking that cycle back into a more normal frame of mind and play.

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I guess its heavily dependant on aliance you chose.Thats why i prefer aliance with some rules and order but without too much focus on competition.

Perhaps yes, or for some players.

There are others for whom it doesnā€™t much matter.

Noone else being competitive may not matterā€¦ You donā€™t have to be pushy (or indeed pushed) to be competitive with yourself.

Iā€™m pleased what youā€™re doing is working for you :slight_smile:

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I totally agree with you. After almost 3 years my roster is good enough to be able to fight any titan stars of my choosing - I choose to not fight 13/14.

My bench is deep enough to do well enough in wars to help my alliance mates. I can complete every quest and challenge.

I can pick and choose when I want to do a summons. I can decide to not keep dupes and not stress about not getting some fancy hero. I can compete or not - generally I choose not to. I can modestly drop my cups so I get a nice variety of opponents ( not just the Tell trinity).

Because I have two profiles, I can choose to use one to visit other alliances, meeting other players and discussing strategies and policies. I have the luxury now of spending or not since I have very few heroes Iā€™m currently working on and donā€™t need to rush to get ascension items.

I can choose to do only those components of the game that I enjoy.

Thank you so much for your post! This is the first time Iā€™ve been able to start thinking with more clarity exactly where Iā€™m at and where I want take my game going forward.

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this worked very well for me. A few months back I tried to see how high I could go with Challenge Events. I spent hours that weekend replaying and replayingā€¦ and compulsively checking my phone to see if I was still in the tiers I wanted. I used up so many WE flasks and nearly my entire inventory of bombs, mana pots, etc.

Then I realizedā€¦

ā€¦ I wasnā€™t having fun anymore!

Yeah sure, the rewards are great, butā€¦

So I stopped. And the next month, I made it a goal to push only for one tier higher than where I finished last. Sure, challenge myself a bit, but not to the point I was burning out. I had to do a few replays, sure, but only a few stages a day to keep me at a good levelā€¦

ā€¦ and I enjoyed it SO much more. Now I donā€™t dread the challenge events anymore, I actually look forward to them because they are a pleasant change from the usual grind.

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I have only ever played the challenge events to finish them. If I happen to do well and finish a bit higher in the standings then thatā€™s an added bonus. I play to be pleasantly surprised rather than disappointed.

Which is also how I approach portals.

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I am, indeed I was a very active player, but lately I gave up because this game has now become indecent. They only think about squeezing us money and Iā€™m looking for alternatives. The advice I give to everyone is: play less and do not spend money x this game because they have to understand who is in charge and who gives them bread.
Mod edit for content

Around a week in, hereā€™s what Iā€™ve changed so far:

  • Primarily playing twice per day; reduced random check-ins and brief play through the day a lot

  • Reduced overall time with game app open on typical days by around 30-40%

  • Didnā€™t buy any Valhalla nor Atlantis Offers, nor Fast Lane Pack in the Shop; expecting my monthly budget to reduce from $48 to $5-10 (depending on whether I keep up VIP and Valor Pass, which I havenā€™t bought yet)

  • Allowing many of my Raid Flags to go unused, but finding it fairly easy to make use of WE Flags since I have 53 WE capacity at Level 72; filling fewer Chests than I used to

  • Still opted out of War

  • Keeping up with Titans and using my flags

  • Still participating in Raid Tournaments (actually one of the parts of the game I still like, since it has some variety, especially for 3* and 4*)

  • Farmed Atlantis on autoplay and some Loot Tickets, but didnā€™t use all my WE Flasks like I normally do

  • Using iOS Screen Time monitoring and limits to reduce Forum time, Line time, and game time


I havenā€™t decided exactly what Iā€™ll do for Teltoc.

I was originally planning to get Rare Top 1000 to get the Tonic, but havenā€™t decided if Iā€™ll still bother.

I have 13 Telescopes, so I figured I wouldnā€™t bother with Epic Top 500 at least.

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I gave the following advices to one of my friends.

ā€œStop the alarm clock to wake you up at night for hitting the spawning Titanā€ā€¦
ā€œLetā€™s the flags fill up because chests do not guarantee for good rewardsā€ā€¦
ā€œWar chest is suck in general, do not feel guilty to opt out warā€ā€¦

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Princess - ive been there. ā€œgoing casualā€ on one or both doesnt work. 2 accounts are draining. I posted about my regret in having to leave one alliance (probably the better alliance) and i maintained my first account. but its the best thing ive done so far. going casual didnt work, I still spent the same amount of time and energy in the game. I merced for a while and thought about going back. One day i just bit the bullet and deleted the alt account and went free to play on the main one.

Its tough at first - but you get over it so quickly and ive really enjoyed having just 1 account.

Its hard when you spend money on the game - the way i look at it - its like that old ps/xbox that youll never use again. hopefully one day it will just be an icon on my homescreen that i dont ā€œhaveā€ to click

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All check, should I think about that?

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And with these changes in place, have you noticed a difference in your mental well being?

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As counter intuitive as it might seem one thing that helped me is start a second account that is FTP. I still fill up 2 monster chests a day but only 1 per account.

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Reducing my periodic check-ins on the game and having it open in the background less seems to help ā€” but AR disrupted that completely, so I have to see how that goes for longer.

I may still be heading toward reducing more or ultimately leaving. I feel like I could get to a point where I donā€™t care about keeping up on progress.

Being opted out of War and not prioritizing leveling Heroes means I donā€™t care that much about filling TCs (Iā€™m not collecting the feeders anyway, and theyā€™re queued to run for months), and also means Ascension Materials arenā€™t super necessaryā€¦which means getting loot isnā€™t that important.

You can see where the game falls apart quickly if you donā€™t care that much about progress on Heroes.

And I canā€™t really see that changing, because Emblems have made it so thereā€™s little value to leveling more 4* Heroes, and without War, my Roster is sufficient to not care that much about leveling more 5*. Even with War, 25 5* and 25 +18 4* was usually plenty. And I have another 45 maxed 4* on top of that, plus Lady Woolerton at +9, eventually going to +18.

Itā€™s enough that I donā€™t see much motivation to work on more Heroes, other than the slow drip from farming.


Iā€™m still working slowly on Troops instead of Heroes, but the game design limits progress on that pretty severely, so I donā€™t know if thatā€™ll continue feeing worthwhile.

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Well crap.

Great explanation but not exactly what I was hoping to hear. Lol.

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Maybe not what I would hope to hear from a moderator, but I for one prefer to hear the truthā€¦ even when it hurts.

Fortunately in my case, I donā€™t have a bunch of fully leveled 5* heroes yet. Maybe itā€™s because Iā€™ve been slacking. Maybe Iā€™ve just had really bad luck. Maybe itā€™s because I didnā€™t spend enough, or because I never joined one of those alliances that is always killing double digit titans. Whatever the case, I still have a lot of progress yet to make. And much of what Iā€™m reading on the forum lately isnā€™t exactly inspiring me to rush any faster to finish.

Still curious as to why there are many players at the top who are vehemently opposed to players in the middle having better odds of summoning top heroes, whilst at the same time complaining about lack of variety in their competitionā€¦? Seems to me like SG could potentially ā€œkill two birds with one stoneā€ by giving newer and lower spending players more opportunities to pull old heroes (and their required ascension mats), so that we could level up and start playing in the big leagues alongside them - and diluting the current overconcentration of GTV defenses with a bunch of wacky old school heroes instead. :grin:

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That would be fine, but the big issue to me is this game needs less focus on endlessly adding more Heroes, and more ways to make use of those Heroes in interesting ways.

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Fun with Heroes

+1000x :heavy_heart_exclamation:

My first, and longest, ragequit ( 4x months ) was before war opt out was added.

I had done everything I could with Classic 4* 4.70 heroes.

SGG added emblems.

I quit again when I had enough Classic 4*+18 heroes to complete class quests.

SGG added Atlantis Rising and Advanced House level 9. I ran 3x legendary training ( RT20 ).

I quit when I got the last Classic 4* hero ( purple 4* Cyprian, one of Gryphonkit 's top 4 heroes).

SGG has a great game.

But Costume chamber summons, Tavern of Legends summons, Alchemy lab, Hero Academy, etc. is not as good as previous content like emblems, Atlantis Rising, Advanced house, and Harpoons ( build Lodge just for 6x turn attack -25% and defense -30% )

Notes

Harpoons rock
(Search results for '@Gryphonknight harpoon tip ' - Empires & Puzzles Community Forum)

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Agreed, but Iā€™m not even talking about adding new heroes. Unless they start actually doing interesting stuff with the Season One heroes? Which is what the majority of my roster consists ofā€¦? So far, theyā€™ve added costumes and emblems, which help make S1 heroes more viable. But most of the discussion on the forum is relating to S2, S3, event heroes, and HotMsā€¦ SG can manipulate those any way they want, but it wonā€™t make any difference at all to me if I donā€™t even have those heroes, nor a reasonable path towards being able to pull them.

I cannot turn an Elkanen into a Telluria, or a Khagan into a Gravemaker, or a Leonidas into a Guinevere, etc. If I had a dollar for every time someone on the forum told me ā€œjust use Proteusā€ā€¦ Iā€™d probably have enough money to actually buy myself a Proteus. :laughing:

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In my opinion in a game like E&P you can never play competive.
You canā€˜t because there is only a part of the game in your handā€¦ the other (bigger) part is RNG.

Furthermore the base for competive gaming is not givenā€¦ you cannot compare ppl because everyone has diffent heroes, troops and boards to play with.

That means in my opinion everyone is playing casual. Some do more, some do less.

To lower your playtime or stress while playing one should set goals that you want to reach and that you are able to reach.

For me most important thing is helping my alliance, which means titans and war hits.
Alliance wars are somewhat the only real competitive playmode in the game although many things are based on luck and other factors. But anyway I would not stop my war hits at all.

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