They are doing a pretty poor job of making me think I can obtain every troop, too. Or really, anyone that has analyzed the numbers.
Sadly, it was possible before mythics, and likely when new legendaries were glory pack releases (albiet over a long period of time). Slower guilds would get much less ascensions and fill out a collection much slower, but overall, the “tipping point” could be as low as about 100 gems per week after tributes to build up enough of a gem supply to get new kingdom legendaries with event keys, every glory pack troop release, and still have some left over to attempt old legendaries when the came around in kingdoms. This period of time is when I spent the bulk of the money I’ve spent on the game to date, back when the benefits were both short and long term for me, since I didn’t have to worry about RNG ruining my ability to collect future releases.
The “tipping point” where you can always unlock everything legendary and above (not even counting mythics) is now much higher, requiring an average of about 100 event keys for any new legendary on average 1.5 times a month (including new kingdoms) and a ton of gems, so about 37 event keys per week. Just for new legendaries, you’ll need even more keys if you want to try and get old releases you missed. Attempting a mythic takes more resources than it would to complete an entire collection before they existed. And yet gems remain the same price in the cash shop. This is yet another reason I am apprehensive about gems even being offered as a reward for the mode.
There will come a point in time where I can’t ignore both low level guild wars troops and missing mythics because they will prevent kingdom star progress despite having been sitting at endgame for months. That’s my biggest concern here. I’ve played a long time. I put in my weekly time. I’ve put cash money into the game. I’d at least like access to all the content.
I’ll post a links to my rewards change proposals, since I think they were pretty far down and mixed in with a ton of other stuff. Warning, long posts.
Cliff notes version - remove gem and gold rewards entirely rewards, lower sentinel gem costs, give out troop tokens that can be exchanged for guild wars troops instead of actual troops, troop tokens become something else (like gem keys/gems) when you can’t use them anymore, troop tokens can be purchased in the cash shop in limited quantities, (optional) more brackets so it feels more like an actual competition.