Ever wonder what those "whale" hangars REALLY cost?

Good post and spot on. I like your writing style.

Though to be fair, a lot of the mk2 maxed guys sat on well above 1B Ag and buying Ag is - as you highlight - the absolutely most expensive part of the equation.
Personally I've spent around $1500 on this game for a mk2 maxed hangar (which is fairly close to your estimate) but I had plenty of Au beforehand and never bought Ag.

One correction would be that it does not take "years" to upgrade from a mk1 maxed hangar to a mk2 maxed hangar without rushing but closer to 50 weeks or so.

1500 is a huge pile of many to be sure. I've spent around 500 on this game over the last 2 years.

When I think about from a purely entertainment value I think it works out to be like .25 cents per hour.

To think when I was single (and young and dumb) I'd spend that much on a single night out.

For me I could easily drop another 1500 on this game and the bank account wouldn't even notice but my hangar as is (meta from 3 months ago maybe) is still very potent and still far from max. Most importantly still giving me entertainment.

Obviously there is more important things to spend money on: house, investments, boring regular life ?poo-poo?, but once all that is taken care of who gives what a person spends their money on.

The thing I can see that is toxic is the gambling aspect which prays on people.

Well... this is a bit devil's advocate, but if you take a bit to PONDER this I don't think you'd find it untrue regardless of how annoying the dash clan clubbings are... not even sure if this is going to be quarantined for a week anyway

In any case it kind of seems like if you view things slightly differently it isn't as bad as all that. Sure, $7,500 is a steep price to pay, but... what if that's SUPPOSED to reflect a steep pay to get ahead principle rather than win, but the REAL problem is actually that it's a very very extreme example of the short cut between the two... both in the amount of how much you have to pay to be ahead and sure, how much farther ahead.

I mean consider the game already sucks you into ways to fly up to expert leagues well before you were technically ready to get there, only to be caught into a trap of needing more silver to keep up, when really you could have taken more time to naturally have the resources you needed to wander into the same league.... IE, the game can craftily nudge you into temptation to pay to get ahead, but that's all it really is at that point... paying to be ahead here. And I think everyone can definitely agree this is true, so applied to the dash bots....

Forget, if you can (try hard to it is an excellent point), the fact that you've been rolled a hundred times by the money clan, just forget about the pay to win/shortcut completely. How long does it take to get a Haechi without paying. Not counting tons of gold you had stored up (though technically even if you did count it, fine... how long did it take you to store up). Well... I haven't purchased any gold or wsp offers at all, just free rolls and specifically the Haechi I have 2500 so far, so 1/4 a Haechi. So... if I START doing component offers (but not via buying gold to do so) at this point, cause a 1/4 way there it doesn't sound like a hopeless endeavor, then it's accelerated a little bit. Let's call it 4 months ish to get a Haechi. Somewhere right around there. And along the way other random components are gathered, some at same rate, so call it a Haechi + in 4 months. Now REMEMBER... forget about the guys who paid to smash you and focus on THIS question....

How hard is a four month project supposed to rock? Should probably be more or less as powerful as a Haechi, yeah? Maybe even more? I mean it's subjective really, I'm just saying if you think about it THAT way, it's surely not overpowered so much as a mad EXTREME example of "you can pay to get there faster". $7500 seems extreme to me too... I mean usually if you are dropping that much on a game you are getting resources for being the number 1 clan (like I dunno... contest of champions just as a random mobile game example where top spenders spend silly amounts, dropping insane money at least actually gets you something specifically for being top clan).

And sure... you'd be even farther behind after the 4 medium hardpoint new guy etc... but would you really rather spend $15,000 instead? My point is instead of focusing on raging about the game being P2W, maybe just think about whether it is really just an EXTREME example of pay steep to get steep ahead, and ask yourself if you are victim to the same perceptual thinking that got you frustrated getting stuck rising ranks too fast after you strapped some meta gear you read about onto a meta hanger, then got stomped after a quick rise when you were finally under leveled. Are you so sure this much hate over the dash clans is worth it, that perhaps a bit of thinking about things wrong isn't ruining the game as much as an update? What with the rise of 6/6 league for fun... is it entirely a bad thing anyway if after another update diamond is (sort of) the new 6/6 league?

Just remember, how much butt is a 4 month bot supposed to kick when you finally get it, right? Think about it more THAT way and less about pressure to pay... after all you aren't missing out on the resources like other games anyway. Reframe the thinking a little and you'll be way less frustrated. Perhaps less pressured to pay as well.

Lmao I gotta show this to Addictive

There maybe some of the whales who dropped that money on this game that live in a cardboard box with a router in it, but my guess is that they already have the high end computer systems etc.

Also, don't forget the possibility that some of these players are hacking. I don't like to think about it, but it is very possible that some players hack gold and premium bots and weapons into their account. I don't think it's unlikely that at least a few players hack instead of spending thousands of dollars on virtual items. I don't know which is worse: Hacking or spending this much on a game.

Had a random solo game today, there is a guy from one of the top iOS clan who has 2 hangers almost full of MKII 12/12, 7 Heachi, 1 Inquisitor, 2 Bulgasari. 6 MKII level 12 Shocktrain in hanger 2. Got perfect bots/weapons for large or small maps. Average 1.3m damage.