How much does it cost to compete in the Rivals ladder?

There's an ongoing debate in Rivals on whether the "pay to win" aspect is too strong – or if you can actually compete without paying at all.

First things first: To win tournaments and to be considered the best player in the world, you don't need to invest a single cent. Why?

1. Because tournaments are played at "equal levels"
2. Because you can train with other players at "equal levels" in custom matches

Of course, ladder play is a bit different. In practice, you need to play ladder to train comfortably, as custom matches are a bit painful to organize and set up. At least getting the training value in the ladder is also certainly possible without paying a single cent:

1. Within 3 months, you can get to L10 units without paying at all.
2. With L10 units, you can get to the Tiberium league and play against strong opponents (often even at a handicap because most opponents will have higher levels), thus getting you the training value you need.

But still, this can be frustrating. So let's ask a narrower question: How long, or how much money, does it take you to get to unit levels that allow you to compete on equal footing in the Top100?

For the purpose of this article, I'm simplifying a bit, also to keep calculations easy and the text short. My assumptions will be:

1. Without paying any money: You can get to L10 within ca 3 months. Which roughly means that you'd be at full L11 after ca. 5 months and L12 after ca. 8 months. This is not precise, and depends on playing volume, event results etc. – but it's close enough for a high-level analysis. See this article to see the actual costs for upgrading your units to a certain level. I assume a slight acceleration of your progress after the first 3 months as you're now at maximum level, as you get a bit better in the events (assuming you run 8-2 in the Blitz events), and as you get the full Tiberium rewards each season.
2. You are at this L10 right now. And you play about 30 games a day (~2 hours).
3. You think L12 would be great right now to fairly compete against the vast majority of the Tiberium players. And you don't like waiting another 2.5 or even 7.5 months to get to L11/L12 respectively, because whilst you're getting to the Top400 each season, you have too many frustrating matches.
4. I calculate only with Rare cards for simplicity. This is not a vast error, as the progress on different units isn't that different, especially if you use cloning vats (more on that below).
5. You want to upgrade at least 9 cards per faction to L12 for some diversity of play, and adjusting to the meta.

So, what level of spending would get you to L12 within a month?

• Without paying, you'd need ca. 5 months to get the 900 cards (plus credits) to get 
• 20% of the progress within this month is free, so you need 720 additional cards
• 5 cloning vats (which can be run in parallel in addition to your free one that is part of the above-mentioned free progress) will yield 150 rare cards
• So you need 24 cloning vats to accelerate the progress of L10 to L12 within this month.
• As you want 9 cards per faction, you need 18 x 24 = 432 cloning vats. This would cost you 54,000 Diamonds in the store.
• At my German store prices, this would be €400
• To use the cloning vats, you'd need to play 86 days with your 30 games a day, so you'd need more than this month – or significantly increase your activity

So, this is of course wildly simplistic, as I only used cloning vats, and ignored credits. The lacking credits, if you buy them in the store, would cost you another ca. €200. So you spend €600 after a total playing time of 4 months to be very competitive not just in tournaments, but also in the ladder.

But, as a good ambitious player, you're of course using more efficient ways of spending than just the cloning vats and credits in the store! As an example for this, let's take the currently ongoing "RESOURCE CHALLENGE". For an 8-2 run, this gives you (turning the chests into cards – big thanks to Omeleet for help with the calculations):

• 6 cloning vats (e.g. for 180 Rare cards)
• 21,850 credits
• 1,401 common cards
• 257 rare cards
• 27 epic cards
• 42 diamonds

And this at a cost of 875 Diamonds (Premium Track plus Rerun Cost), i.e. a net cost of 833 Diamonds. This is much better than buying cloning vats at and credits in the store, as the following table shows:

To compare this, I calculate the Event rewards as "Rare Card" equivalents, for which I assume 3 common cards = 1 rare card and 6 rare cards = 1 epic card. See here why I chose these factors.

So at face value, the event would be 6x more efficient. Of course, cloning vats have a huge advantage compared to random cards (as you will not need many of the random cards). I assume a discount factor of 2-3 is fair to account for this. This still means that the "RESOURCE CHALLENGE" is 2-6x more cost efficient than buying cloning vats and credits in the store, depending on how you look at it.

So, in my example above, we ended up at a cost of €600 to have L12 decks after 4 months of playing with "stupid spending" (ok, real stupid spending would be buying epic chests, so let's maybe rather call it "unskilled spending".

But as rerunning events as the current "RESOURCE CHALLENGE" is much more efficient spending, you could get there with €200-300, which is €50-66 per month.

What's in those chests, actually? Thanks, Omeleet!

So, you can be very competitive in the Rivals ladder for ca. €50 per month. Is that too much?

In my view, it's about fair. How do I get to that conclusion?

1. It's not mandatory spending. You can play for free and still get to the Top100, as many good GDI and Nod players show. And you can still play and win all tournaments.
2. The €50 per month equate to less than €1 per hour. That's not a lot of money if you compare it to other types of entertainment. Maybe Netflix is cheaper if you binge watch a lot. But Cinema, Bars, Restaurants, .. – all of this is more expensive.
3. Even if you compare it to full price games from back in the days: Be honest, how many hours did you get in average out of  €1 spent on full-price games? 
4. This type of spending could even be considered more fair than charging €30 as a one-time payment. Because even players who ditch the game after a couple hours would pay the full €30. For example, millions of buyers of the original Starcraft payed a ton of money so that a few hardcore players like me got to play thousands of hours on the Battle.net.

Yes, it would be nice if you'd need to pay less or nothing at all. Yes, it would be nice if the rewards for non-paying players would be a bit better, still. Yes, there are players who cannot afford even  €20 a month on this game. Yes, there is the risk to spend more than you can afford through the addictive, gambling-like "chest opening" and the abstraction layer of Diamonds between your money and the in-game purchases. 

All this criticism is true for Rivals and most F2P games – I just want to point out that it does not actually cost thousands of Dollars or Euros to compete, and that there's a reasonable middle ground between "not spending at all" and "wasting money".

My recommendation to a new player would be: 

• Play the game fully for free for 2-4 weeks. 
• If you really like it, start spending about €1-2 a day, ideally by buying larger (i.e. more efficient) Diamond packages. 
• But never, ever start spending aimlessly. Track your spending meticulously to ensure you're not overspending. If you catch yourself doing it, stop! If you overspend twice, delete the app.
• Use these Diamonds to rerun the best events, and maybe level up key units through Cloning Vats. 
• If you're not sure what to spend on, ask on Reddit or in the official Discord, there's tons of helpful players. 
• With this spending, you will progress quickly, and catch up over time to the vast majority of players even in Tiberium league. 
• Yes, some whales and dolphins might still be 1-2 levels ahead of you, but 80%+ of the games you play (plus all tournaments and custom games) will be very fair (or you having the advantage).

Video recommendation of the day

AliciaDestiny is one of the best Rivals players out there. Her micro is absolutely insane at times. This is a very recent video of her playing ladder. Also check out this interview with AliciaDestiny!

Further reading:

• More context on the "pay 2 win" elements in C&C Rivals
• Why I believe that C&C Rivals is the best Mobile RTS