I would like to know about the old players here on the forum, but when I say old I mean at least 2 years in the game: What was Empires and puzzles like at the time? how were the rewards from the chest, from the titas, what were the ascension materials like? were they as useless and petty as they are today? I have this curiosity because I’ve only been playing for 5 months, but I’ve heard a lot that in the past or at the beginning of the game the rewards were much easier and easier to achieve … please comment.
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There are more sources for A Mats now than ever. Emblems (which are relatively new, so you don’t have to be old to remember a time without them) are now being given away at a more rapid pace than before. I would say now there is far less grinding needed to reach fully ascended 5 stars than any other time in the game. And I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing.
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Started playing May 2018. A few months in, there were no war chests in alliance wars. Diamond arena chests sometimes gave rare and epic ascension items not commonly obtained from the maps, unlike in the current times that you only get epic ascension mats every 4-5 months opening raid chests 3x a day or so. I guess the rate of the mats still even out because new sources become available like the POV, summons chests from the Atlantis and Valhalla portals, introduction of Wonderland event as it is the latest among the monthly challenge events, war chests, etc.
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No the availability of materials emblems and everything else has strictly increased over time
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Heros, mats, and loot were all so much easier to attain. I have been playing since the game started in 2017. The game we play today is nothing like it was back then.
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for everything I’ve heard, it seems to me to be the most reasonable and rational comment to believe
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Provinces were giving better loot, Elemental Chests were way better for tokens and ascension materials but everything else were worse than now. Titan’s loot has always been bad 
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I’m well over 2years in.
There are now a great many more summons possible monthly for F2P.
Chest loots are the same as far as I can tell (but feel less exciting because I have ready access to many things I didn’t when I started)
Rewards from events have increased significantly.
Rewards from new sources have been added (tourneys, war chest etc)
There is definitely a great deal more loot available to all players, however power creep has overtaken loot increases to a large degree, making much of what you “get” feel more dissapointing than it used to.
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there were no emblems, no Atlantis, no Wallhalla, no war. Just S1 heroes and HoTm. There were only two events and only Easter season event.
Drop rate for mats was a bit better from the chests
And there were no arenas in PVP. Most used tank from the top 100 was Ares 
Offers to buy something shiny were just once per week. Rarely two
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Over two years in and …
The biggest difference is that SG offer players lots more to buy now than they did 2018…
There are many more portals for summoning heroes…
Lots more new shiny heroes obviously with power creep …
There was definitely a difference in Diamond chest rewards…
In my opinion, mats have always been difficult to come by … but I used to get more out of the chests, particularly elemental chests …
Lots more focused rebalancing by SG …
Lots of new stuff Emblems, S2, S3, POV, Tavern and now Ninja Tower etc …
Some of the old S1 heroes were highly prized and now probably get left on the bench …
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I keep track of this on a monthly basis and others have as well. There is no evidence from my personal experience or others that track this, that the drop rate has worsened.
My rate of AM per month has increased over time as I have increased my ability to finish events that have AM and receive better loot for higher level Titans killed and moving from Silver, to Gold, to Diamond, to Platinum raids and the increased events with AM.
I currently average about 35 3* AM and 9 4AM per month. Three to four of each come from the Special Quests and another 5 3AM come from the monthly challenges. So the random drop rate is only about 4 to 5 4* per month and 25 to 30 3* per month if you’re very active and taking out +/- 10-star Titans and raiding in Platinum.
Five months into the game, with no spending; I was averaging less than 20 AM per month as I could not complete all the events, there were no Wars and I was probably at Gold and the occasional Diamond in Raids and probably averaging 6* Titans.
I average about 12 monster chests a week, 10 hero chests per week, one titan chest a week, and take out 5 to 6 Titans a week, plus one or two war victories and the occasional war chest. Drop rate is less than 1 4* per week even being this active, so completing all events that offer AM is critical.
Nevertheless, I have been fortunate to fully ascend 20 five star heroes in a little over two years of play and am two AM away from fully ascending two more (including a lucky Queen of Hearts draw).
Completing Season 2 at normal and hard level also provides a lot of AM.
Update: After posting this yesterday, I pulled a Royal Tabard and Hidden Blade from a War Chest (which did not exist two years ago) and a Tome of Tactics (of which I now have 7) from a Diamond raid chest. You just never know.
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I joined March 2019 so can’t claim to be old.
But as I understand it back in the olden days the buffalo roamed free and folk always said hello to each other in the street.
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lol
i don’t think these discussions will ever end
there’s a few regarding loot and what not…
and here is one, just for fun, that should sound vaguely familiar given recent events:
I’m sure i could continue to dig up more showing how repetitive discussions have been in the forum the past few years and each time “it’s always worse than before”.
fwiw as others have mentioned, loot chances are more widely available now than they’ve ever been in the game. that is 100% truth. now whether players feel that way, well they’ve never felt that way and never will. without players being able to insta max every single hero they recieve, the amount of mats from the game will never be enough for player satisfaction.
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Nice idea for a thread. I always like to be there at the beginning of something- I´m in particularly longing for those Heroes of the Month, ahh, to have been there… 
But that aside too, it´s nice with the insight into how the game has changed. It can be hard for a new player to understand the changes that have been happening throughout the years.
Thank you in advance for the input from all
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Ah the good old days of 2017 - 2018, when people complained about boards, loot and OP tank heroes.
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Now I’m not one to draw conclusions BUT from the above it feels like people have had these thoughts before…
No really sure why though. I mean I heard back at the start of the game the 4* ascension items and 5* heroes were so plentiful people didn’t even know 3* heroes even existed.
“For gods sake game, my 7th Joon on the trot from my TC20…Mix it up a bit at least, it’s getting boring now”
Ahh, the good old days before the now infamous “5* Rush” of 1819 and all them folks joined from all over the place and hunted the 5* to near extinction leaving the rest of us with Renfeld’s and Dawa’s
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Been playing since late Feb 2018. The complaints are exactly the same then as now, just the names have changed.
Conventional wisdom back then was, with enough grind and effort you could gather enough AM to max one 5* rainbow team per year. More if you paid.
I think now with all the new ways to get AM that have been added (such as PoV) you should be able to max more in a year.
I currently stand at 18 maxed 5* with enough AM for three more. My bottleneck typically is Tomes.
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Been playing for over 3 years, I need to get a life, resources are exactly the same as always, there is an unbalance in distribution of materials and ascension items but that is by player, In my alliance I am the horn king, received 4 hotm in a row on the other hand I can’t get ascension items. The game changes always upset some, I have telluria and Vela and they are excellent and I would rather have them than not even with the reduced powers, and the alliances with loads of telluras are difficult to beat, but the game remains fair for most.
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Llevo unos cuatro años en el juego ¡Cuatro años! Y las recompensas han ido disminuyendo de manera muy muy evidente, al tiempo que eran sustituidas por ofertas. Seguramente la mayor disminución es la de los cofres elementales, reducidos ahora a recompensas casi ridículas. Ciertamente no entiendo la estrategia de los diseñadores al tratar de incentivar el juego con una disminución tan evidente de recompensas. Entiendo y comparto el legítimo derecho a compensar con dinero su ingenio, tiempo y esfuerzo, pero la desproporción entre el resultado de jugar y los premios obtenidos es cada vez más desincentivadora
Google translate is your friend.
English translation:
I’ve been in the game for about four years. Four years! And the rewards have been decreasing in a very very evident way, at the same time that they were replaced by offers. Probably the biggest decrease is in Elemental Chests, now reduced to almost ridiculous rewards. I certainly don’t understand the designers’ strategy in trying to incentivize the game with such a noticeable decrease in rewards. I understand and share the legitimate right to compensate with money for their ingenuity, time and effort, but the disproportion between the result of playing and the prizes obtained is increasingly disincentive
PS maybe my luck on AM drops was always bad because I have not seen a noticeable decrease over the years.