Make Premium equipment and Heroes more accessible

The current average cost of unlock premium equipment (details) and heroes (details) make them inaccessible for the vast majority of players. I have some suggestions to help more players unlock them while preserving an advantage for those who can afford these prices.

  1. Retain the count of attempts for the bonus reward (epic after 50 opens for equipment, 5 shards after 25 opens for summon gates) between iterations. This way it makes sense for players who have collected some gems to have a go, rather than waiting until they have collect gems to go the distance.

  2. Allow players to pay a small premium to use their Summon Keys / Gold Keys towards special Summons / special Crates - for example, for Special Summons, in addition to the current options (Open 1 for 500 gems, Open 11 for 5000 gems) offer Open 1 for 1 summon key + 100 gems. For the Special crate, Open 1 for 1 gold key + 100 gems.

  3. The current implementation of free ad-based keys would need to change to make the above practical - otherwise saving up keys until the item/hero we want appears on rotation would mean forgoing the free key. Easiest way for this might be to have the crates and gates open only for Keys and Gems, and move the ad redemption to the Offers tab - from there we can watch an ad to receive a key, and if we want to redeem it immediately we can move to the Equipment / Heroes tabs and use it (much like we can redeem a key on the BP and then move to the shop to use it)

  4. Additionally, as a hero / equipment ages, it would be nice if the chances of getting them increased. For example, for the first 3 months of launching a new hero, the chance of getting the new hero is the same as the other available heroes (currently that would be 6.25%). For the next 3 months, make it 50% more than others (that would be 9.09% for premium hero vs 6.06% for the 15 others). Thereafter, make it 100% more than others (that would be 11.76% for premium vs. 5.88% for the 15 others). For the premium equipment it could be 1% for first 3 months, 1.5% for next 3, and thereafter 2%.

Further recommendations:

  1. Add Jackbot to the Tower Shop - for many players the 60 Shard heroes are still out of reach, and this would give them something more practical to aim for. And even for players who have unlocked Jackbot, it’s still good to have this as a means to star him up
  2. Bring the premium heroes to the Castle - just like other Summons’ only heroes like Mortis, Prospero etc eventually made it to the castle, the 60-shard heroes should also eventually come to the castle - e.g. make the shards drop for players who have already unlocked them 1 year after initial release, and make them generally available after another 6 months.