You can only use 30 heroes in wars, only need 25 heroes on titans(not even really) 3 mono event teams per tier etc etc
It’s inevitable for you to not be able to compete with the rest at some point in time. Just have to grind as much as to get there as they did
I’ve bought board and computer games in the past that never saw action. I play E&P throughout the day so spending money for entertainment is acceptable.
But I’m adding to the derailment. 
Liked before the flag
I have not, and will not, commit resources to Alchemy Lab until I am either forced to, or I’m done upgrading all advanced buildings. Anxiously awaiting Hero Academy to get rid of dupes for a favorable outcome, but I sense disappointment will come from that.
Tournaments are a joke. Win one, get a harder opponent, win again, harder opponent… keep increasing the opponent strength and bam, out. The materials aren’t worth it to continue, so I just look at the tournaments as a way to fill my Hero Chest a tad bit faster.
Complaints over, now onto the good:
I like emblems and class specific quests. Might even go so far as say love them. Any way I can get emblems is a plus.
Costumes, I like them in theory. This was something I was iffy about. I want to love them. I DO. But one event and then gone til whenever update 26 rolls out… (if they roll it out with costumes included).
I like the Challenge Events. And family bonuses for Event Heroes.
Atlantis Rises is a great farming experience. And on my alt, a great way to advance through the levels quicker. As for Atlantis Summons? I’m done on my main. Getting three star crap x10 is super bummer inducing. But I love the Event. Hate the summons.
I would like to know one thing though. Will future Stronghold upgrades bring a second Advanced House. I have mine to level 10, wouldn’t mind having a second or third, or even a fourth… but I don’t know if that has been addressed anywhere.
Overall, generally satisfied. Frustrated at times. Wish there was an Epic/Legendary Summons with no Rares.
I’ve been playing since November 2018. In January/February, my time playing increased drastically. A few dips in activity along the way to here, but I would call myself a consistently constant player.
So, how does spending prevent one from having to grind specifically?
@Nitrus I should add one poll…
Alchemy Lab …
0 voters
I would love to give my honest feedback here but I know all too well that if I did it would get censored…
Is that the Bambi rule?
Mama always says “if you can’t say something nice (about somebody), don’t say anything at all”
@Nitrus great poll, wish you would have put 0 in some questions as I would have used it quite happily
Pro
Tournaments
Upgrade old heros (i dont like the costumes but i like the upgrades)
Addictive
Cons
To much advertising and actions… every they i get 2 or 3 offers wich cost money… the focus seems to be on how we get more money… (i feel this way so i stop paying… )
New buildings… cost to much, waiting time is to long, and the rewards are not that great…
I agree. Some features deserved a big fat zero.
Alchemy Lab, I’m looking at you 
Hero classes - fine with this, nice to have the option to give you heroes a stat boost and have the perks of their character class. However some classes are significantly better than others, while things like druid class are pretty useless.
Wonderland - Also fine with it, new heroes are always nice.
Weekly raid tournament - bad because the rewards are still bad. That ‘temporary’ nerf has been going on quite long now.
Hero changes - there’s still a lot of useless/underpowered heroes that need to be buffed.
Atlantis rises - one of the best things going for this game right now. A chance to farm some of the commonly used materials that rarely drop when farming regularly, also with reduced energy cost.
SH/new buildings - disappointing for the most part. Hunter’s Lodge has a couple good items, but many of them require the same titan parts so you’re waiting forever to craft anything. Alchemy lab was a total bust. Hopes are not high for Hero Academy.
Costumes - not really thrilled about them. Changing the class, special and stats of a hero is pretty meh to me, plus you need to level them again.
Classes & emblems: 10/10
Hunters Lodge: cool items, but way to expensive
Alchemy: worthless, could have been much better, if one could do sth meaningful with it
Costumes: nice
Classes and Emblems: No complaints, 10
Quests and Class Trials: No complaints, 10
Tournaments: Great but loot needs a slight buff and need 5 strikeouts instead of 4 (1per tourney day), 8
Costumes: still very new… The idea is cool and great way to keep S1 heroes relevant, but need more ways to obtain keys and the gem cost shouldn’t be as much as the actual hero summons and if they must cost as much as the hero summons then we shouldnt have to level them with anything beyond feeders again. I also believe that while leveling it for each hero that chooses to wear it makes sense, the stat boost application to the non costumed heroes themselves shouldn’t require duplicate leveling of the costume as long as the original costume and all heroes receiving the stat bonus is maxed, the stat should act moreso like how element links work among like heroes. 7 thus far
Events: Great across the board and the loot tiers are actually very good and obtainable without being too easy. Plus the ability for everyone to play at the different levels to encompass a variety of players is genius…probably my favorite of the game, 10
Heroes: A lot of balance issues, either too OP or useless, some past ones need buffing to be more viable and go against new ones, 7
Titans: Great in terms of play, but loot is severely nerfed and needs some buffing. Way too many resources spent in this area as Titans are a daily task and the biggest place players rely on for loot and mats, 6
Wars: At first I hated the boosters but now I really like them, it would be pointless if there were none as the raids are essentially the same thing one on one vs alliance against alliance, 9
Raids: Fun, but the matching by cups is pretty weird and probably should be revisited, also the diamond loot is another area severely nerfed and could use some improvement. Otherwise, pretty good, 7
AR: My other favorite part of the game, 10
Buildings: Well, I think there should have been 5 mines instead of 4 as Iron is the most used resource and builds 90 percent of the buildings so the little bit produced is not efficient imo, don’t have advanced ones yet so I can’t speak on those. Overall I guess it’s okay, 7
Troops: Too. Darn. Expensive…PERIOD. 6
Overall: Great game, and I look forward to the continued journey, 7.5
I think SG gave us a lot of new content this year. Not all good imo. Alchemy lab is pretty much useless in the current format. I don’t really use hunters lodge but my alliance takes down 9* titans. Maybe above 10-11* we will see it’s use. Costumes are a good idea but are way to expensive. We need more ways to get keys or better odds. Or maybe a way to farm costumes. I still enjoy the game after 2 years but i do feel that SG is more and mote oriented towards money.
Pros:
Cons:
Great poll btw.
HIT : Hero Classes / Atlantis rises / Weekly raid tournaments / Riddles of wonderland event and all updated challenge events (new completion rewards, new heroes, 5 extra stages, 5 days duration, challenge event coins with suspicious chests… that’s pretty good)
AVERAGE : Hunter’s Lodge
Total FLOP : Alchemy lab, how disappointing !
Costumes : Too early to give a feedback
I think SG has done a fine job overall in 2019 for all the content they have rolled out. Adding new heroes has been the biggest improvement ( that includes costumes). I like the fact- we can’t own/level them all so there is a variety/challenge when we play the game for wars/tourneys/raiding. Sure, it was not perfect; Alchemy lab, tourneys. But, SG rolled out these things continuing the game progress and we have a S3 coming. A lot of the dissatisfaction from the players on this forums is them not realizing your not meant to be “the best” in every situation. Like in real life you should have strengths and weaknesses. Deep down we play this type of game because we “like to build up stuff” and we stay interested if we see there is progress to be made…SG has done a great job of creating that need for us. I’d like to thank the players that contribute on these forumns for trying to make the game better- thus making my experience better. No matter who you are; moderators, disgruntled c2p, outspoken know it alls, arguementitive morons etc. At the end of the day it’s fun competing with/against you people. Let’s all have a good 2020 and carry on doing what we do.
I have got an idea how to bring more appeal to the Alchemy Lab: 5000 Alkashards for everyone 
I think they are stingy with loot for tournaments, class quests and now also costumes quests. I somehow can understand that they don’t want give out tons of emblems and they also communicated this when introducing emblems but it’s still dissapointing and makes them look greedy because there are many deals to buy them.
And I think it’s even more dissapointing with the costume keys. Costumes bring diversity to the heroes and makes the game overall more exciting but they are really greedy with this one. They gave everyone many free opportunities for the Atlantis portal with Atlantis coins and with the newly introduced challenge coins for the events but the costume chamber is lagging behind.
And another topic are the summoning odds. I’ve downloaded a copy of E&P and they give 2.5 % for legendaries in all summons and a guaranteed 4* in a ten pull. Those minor improvements could also be implemented here. Cause one day there might be a copy that does it better than SG 
Hero Classes
Very needed change - these added a lot of depth to the game and long term planning. And at the same time helped those who are not in the late game yet. 4 start emblemmed hero is very close to vanila 5. However, I think they underestimated how this will impact the balance of the game, in my opinion not in favour. See war defense teams where everyone aims to put only heroes with emblems - while at the same time, attackers will not have 6 teams with emblems any time soon. Same for regular defenses. I think the downside being forcing players to use limited pool of heroes is really significant. In the end, the goal of the designers should be to make us use as many heroes as possible. Talents are also not very well balanced and some rework should be on the agenda. Monks being able to resist almost everything are very strong, while the rangers pierce is supersituational. Too bad they almost never rebalance.
Riddles of Wonderland
Not my favorite event, heroes are neat in design but I think too situational, but it’s good to have one more in the rotation.
Weekly Raid Tournaments
All that it brings is the memory of a false promise. The implementation had all the possible errors and mishandlings ever. Fantastic rewards for unfair and bugged 1st run of the event, then taking them down to return with more fair rules but silly rewards. Even though they buffed the highest tiers, it is still bitter. I still actively participate in them and even revive occasionally so I rarely end lower than 5%, but Saturday morning reward roll is almost always disappointing. The tournaments rules could also use some more variety, there’s so much potential here. It’s not even close to be as exciting as they announced. The upside is making me play heroes that I wouldn’t normally play, so there’s something fresh, but the competition itself is meh.
Hero Changes
Aegir is the real winner here, other changes were rather minor. Buffs to classics were needed but I’ll never understand how they buff one hero and not touch the other who is equally if not even more terrible. I’d actually see much more rebalance changes. I get it’s tricky in a game designed like this one where people invest their resources etc into levelling up a hero who may end up being nerfed but I think it’s just easy excuse. They could allow people to reset a hero and get all the ascensions mats back for a limited amount of time after a rebalance patch, for example.
Atlantis Rises
Fantastic way to end a Season Two. Atlantis portal kept coming back when new levels were added, so keeping that with new neat mechanics was nice. It also silently addressed the issue players were facing that with adding new ways of spending world energy outside farming (emblem quest, new events etc) people stopped getting as many resources as they used to. Atlantis Rises is providing the needed balance there.
Hunter’s Lodge
Not a fan of the entire new mechanics there - that is the titan part hunt etc. The idea of adding more battle items is good itself, but the items are overpriced horribly for what value they provide. Problem is they will also take a slot for your valuable mana potions or antidotes - but in the end you will never predict whether you will need that hurricane or not, for example. I think there should be a separate slot to specifically take 5* battle items for a fight, beside the 4 common ones. Without, I don’t think I will ever use them. I sit on lvl 1 Hunter’s Lodge since introduced, my alliance still farms for the titan parts I have no use for. It’s just another not very well thought through feature, as if someone designing it never played the actual game.
Alchemy Lab
I wrote so much about it already on the forums that I will limit myself here. I just aim to use it for levels 9 and 10 and only because I don’t mind the gem price. Lower levels are pathetic in design, transmutations are so overpriced for what they give (and what you can just craft or get directly so much cheaper) it is again as if someone designing it never played this game outside testing the code. Terrible thing. Funny to add also that I started working on getting the Stronghold upgrades etc with the aim of building the Alchemy Lab ever since it launched, which was like couple months back? Getting my storages upgraded etc. Currently I am few days into upgrading the lab from level 8 to 9, but I’ll still not use it because my food storages are also under construction. Months of waiting to use the new feature, even though I am on VIP. And it will be months before I actually run it also with the transmutation research times and time to transmute etc. This is just ridiculous.
Costumes
I like the idea really. Adding freshness to classic heroes is more than welcome, especially, that many of them in costumes become viable in top level use (I started taking Skittleskull to high level titans because the costume attack stat is better than most of the 5* greens). But limiting the amount of free summons to really 1 per month with these odds is a disaster for f2p. Not adding chance to pull HotM is a disaster for c2p & p2w. Really who benefits from costumes in current form is just whales, as if we needed to buff them more. Really looking forward for the changes and I hope they will actually make this feature player-friendly. A side comment though, I dislike the art of few of these costumes… wouldn’t like this game to turn into a clown fiesta, but Boldtusk, Tiburtus, Skittles are really pushing the line.
There were few more changes not mentioned in the 1st post so I’ll comment on them briefly also.
Reintroduction of 13 and 14 level titans
Great for depth, and I enjoyed killing them daily when I was in an aliance who ran that. It felt logical that with heroes being stronger due to emblems (and in theory, higher level battle items although I miss to see the point of these) high end titans will need to get stronger. Problem is beside having more hp, fighting 13 and 14 level titan doesn’t feel any different than fighting 11 and 12. They don’t even have new skins.
Changes to events and new heroes
Reworking the ladder was nice - the rewards feel actually rewarding now. Very needed change. I never competed in these for high tiers and with the resource-sucking building costs I won’t start any time soon as I limit my crafting to titan battles. Adding new heroes was great idea and most of them are cool, but the downside is - if you had one you wanted, now there’s another one to spend on. If you didn’t have the one you wanted, now it’s even more difficult to get them. At least they finally added ways to get these summons for free - very nice!
Alliance Message system & Alliance impacting changes
Great and very needed feature - finally the alliance description is what it was intended for. Alliance impacting offers were also great addition - not many of them but when they appear, they are always welcome.
Activity Log
Quality of life change we really needed. Changed a lot how we brag or complain about the summons in the forum or alliance channels!
Mystic Vision change
Yay, we can watch more adds! Ever since Zynga bought SG I knew this will happen. I guess never too many roll chances!
Overall, glad to see so many changes on many aspects of the game. And many new coming. The game does not become boring and constantly bring new challenges. I am concerned that many of the new things though are implemented in a wrong way. There are issues like bugs that cause the new feature to be removed and come back nerfed (Raid Tournament… and partially Costumes). There are issues with the design of the feature at all (HL and AL). I also dislike that every change comes with gem costs in some aspect and makes us spend more. It is as if they are told on their internal meetings that every idea MUST make money. It feels like hiding exciting parts of the game behind the paywall and although I don’t mind that myself as the cost is usually bearable, but I’ll enjoy this only if there are other players playing this game. So I hope they know what they’re doing with moving this game toward pay to play model… But still, can’t wait to see what 2020 changes are going to be - we already know to expect couple. The game now looks so much different and richer than December 2018. I hope I can say the same a year from now.
Really everything about the game during the last year for me can be summed up by the increasing feeling that the “free to play” players are being disregarded almost to the point of being actively punished.
The game has always stacked an advantage toward the players willing to pay. This in itself is not a bad thing – it’s how the company makes money short of just charging an initial fee for the app. But the game had at least felt competitive for the free players.
With the addition of the new stronghold levels, new building levels, and the Alchemy lab, as well as other new features, it feels like the game is essentially telling players that they either need to pay (a lot) of money or be stuck in an almost endless loop of waiting. Construction times of 5 or more days, followed by further construction of another 5 or more days, then equally long research times, slow progression to a literal crawl. Meanwhile, players dropping money on the game can buy their way out of “time jail” and move on.
The impact of this is most heavily felt, I feel, in alliances. My own alliance used to have a pretty even spread of players. Now there are heavily powered players and weak players, with almost no one in between. This imbalance is showing itself in our war matchups and our titan performance, where essentially only a few players are having to handle the bulk of the load – and the results are hit or miss. Literally ONE strong player missing a war due to real world commitments can spell total disaster, which wouldn’t happen if the game hadn’t skewed so far away from a balance between FTP and PTP players.
Could our stronger players leave to find a more balanced alliance for them? Sure. But they shouldn’t have to, nor would they if the game was better balanced. Our core members are in the alliance because we all have grown to know each other (as well as one can in a game like this) and enjoy being part of our team.
I feel like at this point, it’s our friendship within the alliance that keeps most of us playing, not the game itself. Which is a shame, because it was the game that got us here.