Let’s calculate what the cost of one normal 5* hero should be without impacting SG’s bottom line.
First, my assumptions:
- The probability of summoning a random 5* hero at the elemental summon portal is about 2% (about 50 pulls expected).
- There are 4 normal 5* heroes to choose from (that is, non-HOTM and non-event) when doing an elemental summon.
Now, the number of pulls you would be expected to need to pull a single specific 5* hero would be
(50 pulls * 4 different heroes) = 200 pulls. At 2600 gems per 10 pulls, that’s 52K gems per hero.
Based on that alone, I don’t think this will ever happen. Faced with such a high price, most players wouldn’t buy it anyway, and making the price any lower would cut into SG’s revenue, which I doubt they’d want to do when the current summon method works well for them. That’s not even factoring in the loss of hero diversity in the game due to players buying only heroes that are considered “top-tier”. After all, who would ever buy Thorne over Richard/Magni/Isarnia, especially when each one costs 52K gems?