I’m on Step 3 sorta. I really enjoy being in my own alliance with 1vs1 wars. I only buy VIP and POV cuz i figure I should support the game some how.
I save those gems til I can do a 10 pull at a NO Season 1 portal.
I’ve been playing since 2018 and spent money blah blah blah. I took a year break and then came back one day.
Hate to break this to you sir but you’re on step 1 
I just broke my no spend rule after months and…not one single event hero. Not with the W3K coins either.
I really wanted M&M. Idiot me. Anyway, I wish I read your thread about 30 minutes ago! 
I realize the HoTM is lucky, but was not interested in that at all.
Stay strong, start at step 1…again
I dunno. Step 3 on your list was Step 1 for me. Being in an alliance can feel very competitive which equals $$$$ . Leaving that part of the game behind has me caring way less about heros. I dunno even know the names of all the ones released in the last year lol
I totally agree with this. There are many times when an alliance mate makes some great pulls and i dive right in on the spending as well. I’m sure many have the same influences and made on the whim purchases. The steps are flexible though so if your alliance is a “bad” influence on ya by all means quit first lol.
Well that about sums up the way a lot players are thinking including myself. Well written.
I quit in the same fashion. Still sober today. And I have a lot more money in my pocket. Couldn’t stand the nerfs and ham and cheese has it spot on. Planned obsolescence is inherent in all aspects of the game.
It makes me sad because it really is a great game, and it just has no principals. Change this tweak that pound sand eat dirt pay me.
I still come back to the forum for more confirmation on my e&p prophecies!
That is the part I dont fully understand.
It is YOUR decision if you want to spend or not.
If you know anything about probabilities and statistics you KNOW that what others do has absolutely no influence on the outcome of what you do!
So why do you get back to spending again???
There will always be someone posting here telling people not to spend and trying to make them feel bad if they do. Always. It’s human nature. “Misery loves company”. So acting all surprised by someone posting here is like this is disingenuous. Better just to pat them on the head and wish them the best their future can bring.
Empire end pazzles fac event pul turnamentre fac
You mean besides every aspect of the game encouraging you to try to keep up with the Joneses?
Whether it’s the direct competition of endless raids and wars and W3K, the eternal leaderboard events, the new or “rebalanced” events which are calibrated against newer, stronger heroes, or even “just” the splash screens of shiny art on new heroes and the constant announcements by folks here on the forums and in the game itself when they are lucky enough to pull some new hero, there is always the “walking into the casino” whiz-bang of flashing lights and whirring sounds, enticing you into the prospect of YOU MAY HAVE ALREADY…
…lost
(But if you just tried again, after all, look at all these winners around you, who are beating you, who are getting to finish events you struggle with or can’t even hope to complete…)
At some point you have to find a happy equilibrium of what you are willing to chase (whether that means being dedicated F2P or having some feasible-for-you budget), or eventually just get off the casino floor altogether.
And given the ridiculously accelerating power rush of hero releases, either you have to keep re-evaluating what equilibrium is happy enough for you, or consider whether it really is just time to go 
People are built differently Sir. If everyone has the logic prowess as you do, we wouldn’t have any advertisment or billboards of any kind now would we 
Great ideas on quitting. I too am sick of what they are doing and have been for years, but I only complained. I get the same damn 3 & 4 & 5 99.9 % of the time, and when I inquired about algorithms (sp) they swore up and down nope not possible. Well it is and now they have raised the prices on everything. From the balloon crate to pulls. almost 10K for a 30 pull PLEASE. Used to be we could use 300 gems for one of the special heros. Like you, I have been with this game at least 5 years. My screen gets crammed so FULL of their ‘for sale’ crap I have to move the screen around to collect anything. This game at least for at the OverLords is plain and simple. Make $$$$$ and keep giving us less and less. Just like POV, less and less. This will be the first one I won’t be able to finish because I am NOT spending $. Some in our Alliance whom have the same heros you are speaking of, are certainly pissed off. This Alliance spends $ like running water, but they have also said since they nerf their heros, they too are cutting back, I don’t think they will leave though? I don’t even get those great heros, again I keep getting Ulmer and the like, mainly 3 stars. I do like your idea and I agree this game is an addiction, and I like your idea take those funds you would have used here and gift something to someone in need. So many are in need currently. I am going to work on following your solution. Thank you.
Oh, you mean like literally every aspect in life? Like the neighbors across the street that have a nicer and bigger house than yours? Or that dude/dudette that pulled up in that new, shiny sports car at the traffic light the other day? That new iPhone 14 Pro that just came out? And literally everything else that requires spending if you want to keep up with the Joneses. Or you can just be happy with what you can comfortably afford and live within your means to avoid backbreaking debt. Someone making 30k is not going to have the same luxuries as someone making 100k. Same principle applies here.
If you choose to be F2P, which is absolutely fine (and I do believe improvements need to be made overall in the game), you cannot reasonably or logically expect to keep up with the Joneses. If you do have that expectation, then that’s completely on you.
Extremism is just… sad…
Keeping up with the Jonses doesn’t have to translate to anyone who has grown tired of the chores. Even just spending five hundred bucks maybe considerable for some who are aware they can get a high quality PC game for $70.
I’d say spending a total of $1,500 during say…
3 years.
Is a moderate amount considering the spectrum.
And considering this is a connect-3 mobile game. That amount of money still seems…
Extreme… to me.
But if you have a blast connecting 3 tiles for that amount of money and time, then more power to you.
The amount of TIME required to develop a roster that is inherently designed to degrade over time at an increasing pace, is something that just doesn’t translate as "worth it" to me either. Again… to each their own.
Whereas, "keeping up with the Joneses" is a dollar figure that is completely bat 
Considering the inherent design for degradation!
This makes $10,000 per month a subscription! Not a permanent Jones designation. Because next month… more portals, more creeps, and more payments towards your subscription.
No matter how you slice it. At some point, the value of enjoyment is not outweighed by money or time… for all of us! The financial value placed on the pixels was unreasonable to begin with. And as more and more whales check out, you see prices drop. Where the offer for a mat of your choice is now x3…
Belittling others, and bragging about enjoying that… to me is the definition of troll.
And in the end, is a great method for having narrow vision, by limiting a concurrent theme from thousands of voices.
Well from time to time advertisement is trying to sell you something actually usefull.
But we KNOW that SG is not selling something usefull.
Maybe it is fun.
Take as an example people playing the lottery.
They know there is a VERY small chance that they will hit it big but if they do they really get something.
In E&P even if you hit it big all you get is an op hero that will be outdated a year later!
Yes the game is set up in a way to make you pull out your wallet but compared to a casino it has a lot fewer possibilities to entice you to spend your money.
From my point of view I have no idea if your guide really improves a persons chances to let go of the game if the game trapped her in the first place but I defenitely hope it does! 
Best regards.
Elayanith
Except… my car and my astonishingly old phone work.
My heroes kinda often don’t when I take 2-5 year old heroes against a crop entirely from the last six months.
Or when I am struggling to finish events or whether I should even try, because the events AREN’T FOR me, they’re seemingly designed around recent heroes.
For the car analogy to work, it would have to be not so much “someone pulled up in a shiny new car” but closer to “your car is so old that it is illegal to drive on public roads because of rampant pollution plus the inability to reach even close to the highway speed limit; also, you can’t get parts for it.”
For the phone analogy to work, it would have to be less “now there is an iPhone 475” and more “I am trying to read modern web pages using Netscape Navigator 2.0 and download my email using a text-based gopher client.”
[Edit to add:] The latter would be one thing if I just utterly refused to change my Internet habits for the last, oh thirty years, but imagine now that dial-up modems and AOL disks were the Internet of, like, maybe 1-2 years ago, and you can better appreciate how the recent E&P hero release pace feels for those of us in the cheap seats. It’s a big difference between “power creep” (change is incremental, happens slowly enough that people can adapt what they have and they even share in a small part of it) and “power rush” (anyone who’s not tremendously lucky, spendy, or both just gets swept aside).
It’s one thing to accept I won’t have all the shiny toys others have, and quite another for a game that relies on the feeling of progress to make it feel like being a multi-year veteran who has learned a fair bit about the game can easily just objectively get worse at the game until and unless one spends to get at least some of the latest and greatest.
Except…so do S1, S2, and S3 heroes as well. As do older seasonal/challenge heroes. Much in the same way your older car and phone do. Your 15 year old car (just an example) may be serviceable, get you from point A to point B, won’t get the same perks, mpg, comfort, etc as a 2022 would. Might need a patch here and there, just as a newer event/challenge level might need a retry or a battle item here and there.
Nah, it works just fine. Unless you expect your 15 year old car to perform just as well off-roading, going on cross country trips, pile up endless amounts of miles and expect it to perform like a 2022 vehicle and expect to have zero issues with it. Then your expectations are a bit unreasonable. Just in the same sense, you can’t expect heroes from 5 years ago to keep up with the new ones and be able to handle new content like the new heroes. Both are unreasonable expectations without spending money. If you want to keep up with the joneses, you have to spend money in both cases.
Uh huh. So someone walking out there with a Samsung S6 or an iPhone 6 should expect the same performance/experience as someone on the S22 or iPhone 14 Pro? Both can do the same things, just one can do it much better than the other. S6/iPhone 6 user refuses to spend money on a new phone because their old one “works” and is irritated because the S22/iPhone 14 Pro dude/dudette spends money on new things which in turn incentivizes the developers to create newer and shinier phones with a host of other newer/shinier perks that the S6/iPhone 6 don’t have or can’t keep up with. Seems to me this analogy works. Another case of keeping up with the joneses in real life.
And in all honesty, what do you expect? Not to spend but to be able to keep up and be able to progress with relative ease with those who spend–while you refuse to spend at all? People that spend are the ones keeping this game alive. If it weren’t for them, this game would suck like vast majority of them out there and be littered with adverts around every tap off the screen. No thanks. People want capitalism and that is what they got. We live in the world of marketing, advertising, and outside force of influence telling people what to buy, how to think, and how to live. It’s up to us to make our own decisions and set our own expectations that are based on reality. You choose not to spend? Great!! Good for you! I applaud you. But I expect you not to keep up with my pace because I choose to spend (which is not a lot at all). Since I don’t spend much at all, I definitely don’t expect to keep up with someone who spends more than I do.
You can take this any which way you wish, take any example and produce a reason why it doesn’t apply (even though it does), but reality is that “keeping up with the joneses” applies to everything in life. The saying “live within your means” also applies here as it does in real life and no amount of “it’s not fair” will change that. There are definitely ways of improving QoL in the game, such as more opportunities to earn more pulls, but there will always be a gap between those who spend and those who do not. It is a business after all.
Actuaĺly it works very well especially if you think of it ina competitive context, eg racing cars. A 2009 honda jazz (car 1 for me) cannot beat a 2014 jeep grand cherokee srt (car 2) in a straight line race. But if i race it against a 2010 mazda 323 its a close race. Driver skills can push the win one way or the other. And engine or exhaust upgrades (lb, emblems) can also have a significant impact.
There is a failing in the analogy though. a 2009 honda jazz will just never ever beat the srt. No matter the driver skill. But the gaming equivalents have an outside chance of am upset win if the tiles line up fabulously and the driver drives well. Especially if you take a chance on using nitrous for a winning boost or a spectacular crash (mono)
