I agreed with most points in your post, apart from this. I think skill plays into playing this game a lot more than a lot of people give it credit for. Rush tourney - you have to play the board differently. Avoiding diamonds if you can, targetting enemy heroes a lot more specifically, distributing your troops differently (deciding who should get charged first), and matching differently (do I go for the 4-gem match that will set me up for all specials charging later but will result in the tank going off, or go for the 3-gem match that will kill the tank now). Not to take away the luck aspect completely - in a no yellow rush tourney I have indeed been destroyed pretty quickly by 4 Alfrike tank teams. But in all other scenarios I think there is a fighting chance if you prepare smart, and play smart
Couldn’t agree more with this portion.
Truthfully I was never that into games and even less so beyond say Sega, PS1, etc. It followed to some degree with computers games where you owned the game and money just got you random things like a new avatar or something.
I have been at this for about 3 years now. I decided when I first downloaded it to not spend money. Part of that was being naive and thinking how much difference can money make? I was in a few alliances early and never ventured onto these forums until I joined them in May (2.5 years in - better late than never). I assumed the people that paid in the alliances I was in were just luckier. No one spoke dollar values. I naively assumed it was $10 here or there. Perhaps a $50 for something really good (I know, I am dumb). I had no idea the amount of money they were dropping in heroes.
The first I ever heard was $100 summoning to get one hero. I scoffed at that at the time. Not so much over say not having $100, but I didn’t see that value. I thought it was nuts. Then I got more into the forums (to everyone’s chagrin 
) and heard of people dropping thousands chasing a single hero. That admittedly blew my mind.
Note, this is me personally. I can see how other people can that value and am not judging.
I come from playing games like Warhammer and 40k (I think @Cheds and @JonahTheBard do as well) so I understand “overpaying” for what something is.
Once I realized the extent I was admittedly disappointed and disillusioned. It didn’t generate a desire to spend to compensate at all though. I eventually realigned my perceptions of what was happening and realized the trials I had set myself up for originally as a F2P. The roads like arduous when you don’t realize what you’re doing by the way 
Anyways, my .02 cents
And that’s just it.
I was foolish when I started playing.
I got my free stuff early on… my free Bane and the other occasional 3* hero here and there. Noticed everyone else around me had all these 4 and 5 star heroes.
“How’d you guys get those?”
“Summons.”
“Cool!”
I knew there were ways to get free summons, but they were few and far between. First alliance always told me, ‘game is a marathon, not a sprint!’
I said okay, okay, cool. I understand.
Somehow others in my alliance who had started around the same time I did were getting tons of fancy heroes.
“How the heck did you guys get all those summons?”
“Oh, we bought some gems.”
“Ah, I see!”
So I bought some gems.
I thought these guys were buying like $5-$10 worth of gems. I figured I’d one-up them by buying $30 worth. HAHA! I’m going to get all KINDS of awesome heroes now!
Oh now naive I was back then!
Thinking to myself… “c’mon, this is a silly mobile phone game… they certainly wouldn’t expect anyone to spend more than $100 on it”
Au contraire!
$100 just buys you the E&P starter kit.
I don’t think this business model is going to survive for long in EU at least. It is extremely predatory by nature and violates the essence of all existing gambling laws in all but the literal sense.
At the very least they’re going to have to disclose what you get in the current summon(s), like they did with the cases (cosmetics lottery) in CS:GO in Belgium. Seeing that your next 10-pull is going to net you ten 3*s will probably cool some heads and prevent unhealthy decisions.
I dont think it’s as cut and dried as that. After the recent ruling there was some discussion that it would be covered more by consumer rights legislation regarding dissatisfaction with purchase rather than by current gambling laws. Here is a screenshot of the Irish government position, in which they also state there is some agreement in this regard with other EU member states
Anyway, I’ll jump back out of this thread now as I dont want to bring it off topic, which I at times have a habit of as my mind rambles…
I am pretty much F2P, have brought the gem offers where everyone in your alliance gets some and thats it. After two years I have reached my ceiling. I have 11 5 stars and 2 of those were HoTM. I’m working on Hero academy on the hope to get some more (about 4 5 star doubles) but still have a loooooooooooong way to go on this. I know this is it for me and I’m happy with the thought I may get something good…one day? Right?
It’s a bit of a taboo how much people actually spend on this. i think most feel a bit of shame about it.
i never really chased a hero but i do pay. i think it is fair to the people developping the game to get something out of it so i have a monthly ‘budget’ that i usually stretch a bit. i think in the 3 years i play this game, i spent close to €900. That money got me 5 event heroes (i had a very ‘lucky’ pull with 2 Hatters and also Mitsuko, Victor and Freya). I also have 14 hotm (2 doubles as well, but i wasn’t very lucky with the good ones: i have ranvir, margaret, noor… but no gravemaker or telluria eg) and all my other 5*'s are season 1 (2 5* costumes). i pull very rarely in the troop portal (maybe 3 ten pulls in that time) and i still don’t have all of them (lacking red mana). That is what you can expect for close to about 900…
i do enjoy the game, i can beat defenses from obvious whales, money doesn’t buy everything :-). i’m in my alliance for 3 years and around 30/month is what i’m willing to contribute for it. i do wish i got a bit more for my money but it’s like that…
For what it’s worth, I am very c2p, three years’ playing next month, and felt I was in a similar situation.
I still have just 1 HOTM.
It took me a lot of effort to gather epic hero tokens, and many tries at different seasonal events (starting from Return to Morlovia 2019). However, I finally got my first seasonal event 5* during Morlovia this year! And just couple of weeks later, I got my first challenge event 5* during Guardians of Teltoc.
Unfortunately there’s no guarantee when you will get something good next. It could happen the next time you summon, or somewhere later in the future.
I truly thought I was unlucky with non-tc20 5*. Hopefully something good is on the horizon for you soon. 
wow sweet, congrats on two great, shiny, new, non-vanilla heroes!
You are correct, I’m a pretty serious Warhammer 40K player and the cost of that makes this game look cheap doesn’t it?
I mean anyone can play this for free…are you going to have all the best kit? Probably not for a long time. But can you play it for free? Yes you can.
And what does this get you? Well it gets you access to a slow burn resource management game with social aspects.
Does it mean you can “win”…well, there’s the question. I mean what does anyone actually win? We aren’t winning money and probably not any level of fame either…no one outside of this game probably has any idea who Anchor is. This isn’t a game for the streamers or Egamers looking to make it their jobs. So I guess it’s a game like casual golf and people like to win on a much more personal level for the boost in endorphins and self worth that gives us.
But this isn’t a game for the impatient. I’m in that camp to some degree…I like the grind but I also want better heroes for my own gaming experience. So I’ve spent to get access to them. Not on silly levels like some but within preset limits I have spare to spend. Some months that’s more than others as it’s the same pot my Warhammer budget sits in.
The funny thing is the whole concept of whales and paying to win exists in Warhammer 40K as well. The best players have the best kit and as the meta in there changes like the wind they spend big to keep on top of it. Last months broken model became a this months worthless tat on levels players of this game couldn’t deal with. The resale value of said nerfed units falls through the floor too and buy and sell pages are flooded with stuff going cheap.
Now…could I buy them cheap and play the game?? Yes I could. Will I win with them?? Probably not.
So I will continue to play this because I like it. I’ll spend money as and when I want to because I’m in a very lucky position where I can do that. Should that change then so will I.
I totally agree with you.
My point is that skill was mantioned as a sole factor, like if this was a FPS or something, and in this game RNG plays a major role in the outcome.
I have lost raids where a Seshat wing ends up killing my 2-3 heroes left, simply because by the time I charge my heroes ghosting tiles, she has 3 minions so I can’t finish her, then she charges and kills one, and so on.
Interesting fact that an FPS requires a lot of luck as well. I also play a lot of CoD (and Counterstrike back in the day). Being good is a great advantage but there comes a point where players of equal skill will meet and it’s luck on who sees who first. In this position it is very usually the person who fires first who wins. Skill plays a huge role don’t get me wrong but an FPS is not without an element of RNG elements too.
Eh, I’ve always figured FPS games came down mostly to your reflexes, hand-eye coordination, and (probably even more importantly) your connection speed (EDIT: not to mention the existence of specialized game controllers and such that give you an actual edge). There is still randomness when you have a bunch of different players running around on a map, as to which player will see the other one first, but that’s not RNG… that’s just real life chance. RNG is a computer generated attempt to mimic real life chance.
It’s not RNG as in RNG but more “an element of luck”
In the more Battle Royale games (Fortnight, Warzone, apex legends) the very end game has a lot of luck as to who gets the ideal end position and sure there are ways to try and mitigate that but even then there’s every chance the ideal place to be has someone there already and in these games it’s often who shoots first wins.
I’m not saying that FPS isn’t a skill game because it is but skill alone doesn’t win them.
Equipment helps too as in a game of microseconds the players can gain a slight advantage. So the kid on his mums home budget PC has a disadvantage against someone with an all singing and dancing high end gaming PC and all the top kit attached.
Money, Skill & Luck - 3 things I’d say are components of any games that’s ever existed.
Well, skill and luck yes… but many older games, money was not a factor. Once you bought the game, you had access to all the same stuff as everyone else who owned the game. There was no way back then to buy “extra superpowered bonus equipment”.
Now, it could be argued that once games started releasing expansion packs, you could have access to stuff in those expansion packs that the standalone game owners didn’t have, so that was a slight advantage.
But you go back to the early, early days of gaming, back then there was a lot of skill involved (not even as much luck). If you were playing say Super Mario Brothers, and you tried to make a jump over a long pit to bounce off a turtle and land on the other side, you couldn’t blame “bad luck” if you missed. If you missed that jump, it was entirely your fault, because you didn’t time it right.
Those games were frustrating at times for sure. But anytime someone would try it over and over again and keep on losing and exclaim that “it’s impossible!!!” - there’d always be some kid in the neighborhood who had beat it 100 times already and said “give me the controller, noob, I’ll show you how it’s done,” and make it look incredibly easy. That’s pure skill.
Oh agreed. In 1 player games it’s all skill…but when you move to PVP FPS you need the rub of the green too. Just played CoD this morning with my mate and we were set At the end, 3 teams left. Gas goes the wrong direction, forces us out of our little fortress and we got nailed from both sides…a different day those 2 teams see each other first and we gatekeeper both of them or the gas goes our way and we nail them getting pushed by the gas as they either pass us or come into the mined to death house.
Because once you get to the last 10 players in a BR game everyone is decent…so luck has to go your way too.
I see the same thing playing wars in this. Skill is necessary to choose the right team and then you need a little luck. Then if you don’t you need to work out how best to get through it. Money is just used to boost the teams but players like yourself can make a roster you might consider to be weaker punch above it’s weight. I’ve just gone 19-5 in the tournament and I’ve been hitting 100 emblem 5*’teams since Tuesday and that’s definitely above my weight. On average about 300 less TP every hit. So a bit of luck and a bit of skill has done me well.
True, true. I guess the only “PvP” games that didn’t involve a lot of luck were probably like your Mortal Kombat / Street Fighter etc. type games. Those games were pretty much all about your skills with the controls. Even if your only “skill” was being able to tap buttons really fast. That’s still technically a skill I guess. 
I do enjoy the wars in this game, and luck is a very major factor. But I absolutely would not say that there is no skill involved in this game. When I see posters on here complaining that they have a 4700 TP team and they are losing raids to 4000 TP teams… I mean sure, once in a blue moon you might actually get a board that bad, but if it is happening repeatedly, you are most likely doing something wrong.
I did a lot of PVP when I was young. It is all about I pee far than the other dude pee.
Agreed with TGW , it is all above reflexes and connection.
@Cheds I prefer to name your luck to Map and Match awareness. Games are all programs so if you know the map well enough and you are a coordinated team, it is not hard for you to spam trap enemies.
Of course, if we change from team match to Fortnite style PVP, then I agree with you, luck also becomes an important factor.
I use all Battle Royale in that analogy. Luck is a huge thing.
CoD 6 v 6 is a lot more reactions and equipment really. But always a little luck in everything we do
