"Strumpoo;c-1914878" wrote:
CG Carrie even said so, I think she said they expect $2000 a year from you to stay competitive.
She said that "to some degree" she expects people to pay $4-5000 to "catch up". You can read that many ways. Some have certainly read it as you must spend that much every year. I read it as, if you started today and wanted to catch the current meta you may have to spend $4-5000. That's a lot. Way too much for me. But you don't need to catch up to the current meta immediately. Time is your friend in this regard. Let the whales whale. Catch up over time.
As to the $2000 per year to stay competitive - I can say from experience that this is not needed. In 2018 I spent $190 on this game (a little more than half of it on the $10 Marquee packs that are of no help in the arenas) and I stayed in the top 5 all year. That cost is about double what a previous poster says a AAA title with all the DLC goes for. I also spent at least 365 hours in game. About 4x the length of a AAA game and more than double one with a lot of DLC. Yeah, $200 sounds like a lot for a mobile game and in some contexts it is. For 365 hours of entertainment? I can afford it and I think it's fine.
I know my perspective isn't completely F2P, which is why I directed the OP to others for advice, but I am at the top of both of my arenas and I spend far, far less than the numbers that are starting to pop up in this thread.