Reflections on Grand Arena and the paid pass

I'm not FTP, I would say I used to be a dolphin maybe, but lately have been trying not to spend money in this game because of how things have been.

I one thing I still buy every month are the season and gold pass. I actually thought the arena concept was fun so figured I would buy the pass and dig into it.

I play about 1 to 2 hours a day. I am an adult who works and has other games and things to do. I feel like 1-2 hours for a mobile game is a lot. During this event, outside of a small handful of games to finish weekly quests that were easier outside the arena, I played entirely the Grand Arena mode. I have also been almost exclusively playing the Herbie Cheese deck (wong, namora, lasher) because I find it fun and people seem to not be punishing it. I don't use a tracker, so I can't say for sure but my win rate has been absolutely nuts. During the entire event I didn't dip below 12 tickets. I would guess my rate was in upper 60s maybe even 70s. This is not to say I'm great or anything, but meaning my progression should have been faster.

After all of this grinding and PAYING for a pass I have 4,425 glory to spend. That is the 2 cards I wanted and leaves me with 425 which buys basically nothing. If I want to get a purple cosmic border, which would be the next cheapest thing I actually would want, I need to WIN 38 more games. It is one thing that they keep trying to get more and more money, but on the other side, we just keep getting less and less for it. For spending $10 and like 20-30 hours of time grinding I got

2 Series 4 cards 400 tokens (about 13% of a series 4 card) a bunch of boosters and credits that are worth nothing.

Granted this math was all available. I could have done a bunch of research, I watched a few videos that just confirmed if you pay and finish the pass you should for sure get both cards. I just assumed there would be a lot more value in the process. I am supremely disappointed in the value of this event and the value of several things lately. $10 for the pass, 2 variants, a series 5 card, gold, credits, borders... +10 for premium, 1 series 4 card, some borders, and 1 variant Paying more should give you more... in the past doubling the cost for an upgrade should give MORE than the original pass, not less. I feel like for my 10 bucks and grinding for this event I earned like half a series 4 card.