Or they were around for some time just I never looked?
Probably time to edit all my old posts defending against P2W claims.
They’ve been rotating packs/bundles through the store for a while now, including periodically bringing in that Arcane Traitstones pack. Months old now.
You seem to have a very broad definition of P2W. I think of strictly in the sense of, “Can a reasonable person achieve the same stuff without paying?” Sometimes this is really blatant like when you can only buy some power-altering stuff via real money or when you can max out your kingdom/troops instantly (like Game of War) whereas most of the time it’s “hidden” such that it’s possible but would take someone a million hours to get there. None of these apply to this game.
I’ve gone over the concept rather thoroughly. Seeing as you can only buy a pack once, and its not enough to trait anything higher than an Ultra, I don’t really think its P2W. Besides which, its too dispersed for one to really utilize efficiently - plus the monocolored ones hurt a bit (although admittedly the Imps got nice buffs).
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If I may direct your attention to the traitstone requirements chart…
Not that I’m complaining. I like having a nice distant goal line to chase with frequent reward intervals, but a million hours to get there sounds about right.
The Arcane Stone pack and the Fire specific pack were new this week, before the parch.
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new set of traitstones offered in the pack, but the pack itself is not new.
Let’s look history: in the beginning were the gems. You could buy them and spend on armor, keys and consumables at a really lousy rate. While you got a gem from cascades, guild tasks and eventually kingdoms. In a better guild in massive abundance. You could obtain more than you needed in short time. The only rare thing were the legendaries in the game.
Then special offers started to appear, $50 packs with legend+supporting cool weapon.
Then we got the economy rewamped (mean: gem sources cut to fragment), added new rare resources. And a few special option went to shop.
And now I see the shop hull of $ packs.
Another perspective if by power. Other games fight P2W claims telling the sold items are mere fluff and most powerful tiers are to be earned, never in the shop. You can buy only lower level things that really keep raining in the game.
On first week of TS we had in shop the minors, then the majors. 3rd week the runics appeared that are borderline. But no arcanes.
Now we have the arcane bundles for $ and the absolute top armor that is not even accessible by any other means.
A third perspective, by your own description. Arcane drops like 1 in 100 games. The pack sells 36 so it’s 3600 mining games. In my book it more than matches your figurative “million hours” shortcutting by wallet.
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So really, it’s “Pay for the shortcut” rather than “Pay to win”. Because really, what are you “winning”? There’s no end game…
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Renown, power, honor, respect… But mostly dread!
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The end game is knowing that you have all the cards and all the kingdoms all maxed out and wait till something new comes out. Oh hey level 1000 players how close are you to getting there after this patch.
Yes, but there’s no tangible reward for getting there the fastest versus other players.
I’m only half a level 1,000, but I know that a majority of level 1,000s are faaaaar away from having everything maxed. The only level 1,000s that are maxed or near to it are those who are or have spent a decent load of cash on the game.
Somewhat untrue, at least for Mr Sammy. He will forever be known as the first level 1,000.
Sure there’s bragging rights but as of right now, there isn’t an in-game tangible reward.
In other words, you can “complete” (as understood by the above definition of “end game”) the game for free, you do not have to pay anything to “win”. Anything for money in the shops just speeds up the process but is not a “must have”.