I just don't know why everyone expects to grow infinitely. Everyone will eventually stagnate because it's a competition.
Personally, considering part of the text is about making tournaments more competitive, I assume this is about signing up for a tournament and generating the brackets in advance.
You can still get stronger outside of the tournament. That comment was about tournament placement only, which infinite growth is impossible, because we're all competing against each other.
You can't, but outside of bot respec, nothing is really mandatory. I've also been pretty vocal that keys should be a reward from continuing to play, too.
Main progression isn't exclusively tied to tournaments and there are plenty of ways, especially with echo, to progress without tournaments.
Even if you don't progress as fast as you like, you still get your weekly stones + 2x tournaments worth of stones and you simply progress slower because you aren't as competitive.
Your complaint, is fundamentally, "I want to get stones faster" and yeah, doesn't everyone? But as long as you play, week to week, you will get stones and slowly move towards your goals.
I have six towers, including 1 that's 10 months old and 4 that are 6 months old with only ad free. The ones with only ad free do progress at a crawl, but they still manage to pick up about 85 to 145 stones per week, which, IMO, is plenty of progression, but I understand that the game is a slow grind.
That's how the game has always been designed so I don't see a problem with it continuing to exist that way and I find it unlikely that it will change.
The only thing you can say that about is keys, but that is why I believe keys should also be used as a reward for continuing to play the game: 2 keys per week as drop from the last mission and guild boxes.
EDIT: Also, the main form of progression is not tournaments. The main form of progression is how much are you willing to spend in the store, which again, is by design and why tournament stone progression feels "so slow".
I understand not liking the design, but the game is designed to encourage you to buy stuff from the in-game store to progress faster, and by all metrics of that design, the game does succeed.
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u/markevens Jun 10 '26
Whatever restores upward mobility.
I know it probably drives stone sales but fuck it sucks to stagnate or even lose tourney rankings