Before You Ascend, consider this:

Player Guides
21

I think when you look at this it makes more sense if you think of it as a hobby outlay, rather than looking at the specifics of the hobby. If E&P is your only hobby and you spend a lot of hours on it every week, and it brings you joy/solace/comfort/companionship or helps to make covid a bit more bearable or even just effectively kills boredom then I would say its quite reasonable to spend $100/month on it. I mean if you compare that to going out and getting drunk frequently, it is cheaper than that and arguably better for you. Or you could race cars for a hobby which would run you into the thousands.

If you casually play a bunch of mobile games and you spend $100/month on each then that seems less reasonable to me as it becomes less about a dedicated hobby that you invest in (invest meaning money going in, fun coming out). Although if you have that kind of disposable cash lying around then it is entirely your perogative to spend it however you want to.

A fine line that everyone has to walk in all of this is that the money you spend should not be regretted, regardless of what actual outcomes you get out of spending that money. If you regret, then you are spending more than you should

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22

I do get that, that’s what several people have told me…

But I’ve been a gamer most of my life, and I’m used to spending a lot less than that on video games. Including ones that I play for years. I’ve always argued that video games yield the “best bang for the buck” in terms of entertainment per dollar.

Apparently game companies agreed, and decided that they should be charging a lot more going forward.

23

I get where you are coming from. I would traditionally try to avoid paying full price for a console or PC game, and would only download mobile games that are free or at worst still less than $5.

But for me personally those games would not provide nearly so many hours of entertainment for me that this game has, and so the cost/hour over the course of 2 years for my entertainment is very easily justified for me (although I would never - ever - share that amount with my wife). Or that would be the end of E&P for me. Possibly the end of everything.

E&P has outlilved my typical phone app lifespan (usually no more than 6 months) and in a format where I can get daily doses whilst doing other things or between doing other things (with job and household responsibilities including 2 kids I no longer have the luxury of being able to physically sit down for long stretches at a time to immerse myself in a console game).

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24

I play Warhammer 40,000 competitively as my main hobby. It’s price equivalent to racing cars :joy:

So maybe that’s contributing to the thought process I have which is paying for your hobby is just normal. I spend a lot of free time on this game because I need to have something to do. I can’t sit idle. So if I’m spending around 4 hours a day in the game there comes a point where I’ll spend on it. Not every deal, I’m not made of money, but the ones that interest me for sure.

But everyone is different and everyone is essentially right. Spend, don’t spend…both fine choices, pick whichever you like.

1 Like
25

Off-topic but… what armies do you play? I collect a bit, and dabble in a bit of second hand buying and selling

26

Space Marines, Space Wolves, Imperial
guard, Chaos and Eldar.

The Eldar are a converted Exodite army that I take for painting prizes. Space marines I play when I want to win. Imperial guard is pure 2nd Edition Cadian so just a nostalgia army and Wolves and Chaos are old loves I still have.

Playing 40K also totally immunised me to Nerfs. They happen so frequently in 40K…anytime something is too good they reign it back. You just get used to it. The only thing that surprised me about my Telluria is how long it took them…

27

I own several games that I have paid anywhere between $20-$60 for, and poured over 1000 hours into each.

$60 might sound like a lot to pay upfront for one game… but I can play that game for years, and get all of the best heroes and best stuff in a matter of months if I’m dedicated enough.

This game? Yeah, sure, it’s free to play. But you can forget about pulling all of the best heroes as a F2P. That’s just pulling them, never mind ascending them.

MMOs? Yep, played a few of them too. Guild Wars I and II, ESO, TERA… in every one of those games, it was possible to get the best stuff without spending a fortune, as long as you grinded hard enough (and it didn’t take years, either).

The other games I’ve played… as they started introducing microtransactions, you’d go to the forums, and the microtransactions were universally hated.

Imagine my surprise when I started playing this game, come to the forum here and… everybody loves the microtransactions! The other games, the microtransactions gave you guaranteed stuffs… in this game, the microtransactions are a slot machine with a very low chance to give you good stuff… and everybody here loves that even more!

Just seems odd to me. Complete opposite of what I’m used to.

Paying money for each hero? Scratch that… paying money for a chance to get each hero?

Would’ve been considered complete and utter blasphemy if such a feature were introduced in the types of games I normally play.

2 Likes
28

I have no talent, time or temperament for painting but really appreciate the skills of others. Ive bought lots of beautifully painted stuff in the past, and love unique, converted armies

29

My Instagram handle is insaneinthewargame if you want to check them out. I don’t post very often on there and it’s only ever 40K stuff but feel free to follow :slight_smile:

30

I completely agree with that.

More often than not the bucket 2 is the most problematic one. Because you know that such hero could be useful (but not versatile enough) and the fear of waste of AM is here.

Personnaly, I tend to only Asdend If I have 10-12 mats for a certain kind of element (for instance I have 11 tabards and I will ascend a purple). In that case I know that I won’t be waiting to long if I have a ‘‘no brainer’’ hero to ascend later.

And the ‘‘no brainer’’ category might not be always a sure thing … I got the chance to pull Frigg last Vahalla and I will 99% give her tonics but I am afraid that she could be nerfed so …

It would be wonderful if there could be reset token for mats also it would encourage more risks and not do as everyone does…

Wiamz

31

:smile: I’m going to shamelessly dump a chart I made here for you. Did the math on the common offers to see which would be worth my while.

image
image1315×1888 979 KB

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32

I remember seeing one posted on here, some kind of “monster offer”… it was insane, something like 10,000 gems for $5… guess it was only offered in the very beginning, probably before I started playing.

Wish I had spent my money on those offers, before I cut off my spending.

I could’ve been turned into a steady, loyal, reliable low spender early on, if I had gotten good deals and good pulls in the beginning… but the spending that I’ve already done left a bad taste in my mouth, especially when compared to what I’ve gotten for free in comparison.

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33

This game loves to make you feel terrible for spending $$$

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34

That’s the thing! The thing that I keep saying over and over again. I don’t mind spending a little bit of money on games. I think that any game developer that creates a fun game deserves to make some money from it.

While I appreciate the fact that this game is “free to play”… and I certainly don’t expect all the F2P players to get all the best stuff easily… it’s almost like this game is going out of its way to dissuade people from going “cheap to play”.

Say you’ve been playing this game for a couple of months for free. And you think, “hey, this game is kind of fun! It could be even more fun if I got a few more good heroes…”

So you drop a few dollars here and there, and you get…

Dawa! Prisca! Friar Tuck! Renfeld! Gunnar! Dawa #2! Renfeld #2!

Etc.

Then you scratch your head. Realize that these are the same heroes you could get for free. And wonder why in the hell you just flushed $20 or whatever down the toilet for feeder heroes.

“Oh, I get it now. I’m supposed to spend more money.”

I suppose, in the beginning, when the original devs got together and hatched the idea for this game, they thought, “let’s make the strongest heroes really rare, so that only a few people ever get them, that way people will mostly be fighting with 3* and 4* heroes, and only the lucky ones and longtime players will have the best heroes.”

Then they realized that some people were willing to spend thousands of dollars to get the best heroes. They made way more money than they had ever imagined they would possibly make.

“Okay, new plan guys… let’s keep this current model, and keep pumping out newer better heroes that other people will spend thousands of dollars to get.”

“But what about the low spending players?”

“Screw them, man. Look at how much money we raked in last month from the whales alone! We don’t need the low spending players. Just give them barely enough reason to keep playing, and keep tempting them with new offers until they cave in and buy to try to keep up.”

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35

Where were you when I ascended Horghall the horrible!

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37

:joy: An oldie but a goodie still. Some of them are wargaming models of legend now.

38

Dawas? Really? I get Jahangirs, mostly. With a few Carvers thrown in forgood measure, and an occasional Balthazar for spice.

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39

It’s a multilayered trap. They get you to invest hours getting established and then slowly start putting the hard word on you for cash… The nature of summonsonsing and gambling make it an arguably immoral business model. Lawful? Yes, but I’d guess by the skin of a bees nether regions.

2 Likes
40

Dawa is just a general term. In the beginning, it was mostly Priscas and Kailanis for me. Then I went through a Friar Tuck stage, then a Renfeld stage, and a Gunnar stage…

Basically, after pulling your 50th copy of each, they’re all just Dawas.

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41

Fantastic post…
The most important part is not the goal but how u get there.

1 Like