Catch up
A game with balanced catchup mechanics would include a realistic way to get 5*+20 Telluria in 3x to 12x months.
Click for usual rant. Nothing forum users, volunteers and staff have not seen before reading the forum
Niantic
In Niantic’s Pokémon GO ( still not great, see freemium business model. Making it worse, The Pokémon Company, Game Freaks and Nintendo control the Intellectual Property while Niantic controls the crowd sourced map and physical hardware so four times the investor headaches ) Niantic’s equivalent of Telluria was Pay 2 Play exclusive from mid summer to mid fall.
The P2P version only needed 4x 4* ascension items to level while the Free 2 Grind version needs 6x 4* ascension items to level.
Hard copy books
An author I liked had a discontinued PAPERBACK book with yellowing, damaged, copies selling for $200 USD on auction sites for years and years. The author warned readers the book was not their best work.
Eventually a tiny publishing house was convinced to run a high quality acid free, archival, hardback reprint, a new sequel book and an more inexpensive library binding omnibus containing both stories.
The author was right, the novel was not that good. But its rarity drove expectations and demand.
The sequel was also not their best work, because it was hindered by the mistakes made in the first book.
The author is one of the few I preorder hardback books, but the out of print book, and its sequel, were books I really wish I had borrowed from the library.
Play style
I have finally gotten some rare heroes in Pokémon GO only to find out my previous heroes had better synergy, color stacking and enjoyment for my play style.
Part of the problem with HotM is the rarity of 5* HotM, 4* ascension items and Hero XP.
Strangling creativity - both Player and Dev
But like emblem resets, without a mechanic for a wide range of play styles to experiment, a huge majority of players will use the most broken, easiest to understand, most popular with influencers ( sorry Anchor ) heroes instead of what they would actually enjoy playing ( looking at you Obakan ).
The YouTube videos of 5*+20 Telluria center heroes will continue to be recommended by the algorithm for years after Empires finally shuts down the servers because they will be the most watched, most liked, and most disliked video about Small Giant Games.
Notes
This is a very old post, with lots of errors, but Gryphonkit, my wife, still uses it as a go to team.
Primarily because 3 of the 5 heroes are cheap.
But.
It took me $1,000+ USD and 2 years to get Cyprian due to Merciless RNG, cost of summons, and lack of any real catch up mechanic.
One day I dream of Empires’ damage mechanic being discovered/ leaked/ reverse engineered, but like many of my childhood dreams, I have given up on it. Same with trade and shards.
FIN