I stopped playing not long after they raised the star cap to 13. I had nearly a full 13 star team, and had spent $11000 on the game, half of which was after I w

I stopped playing not long after they raised the star cap to 13. I had nearly a full 13 star team, and had spent $11000 on the game, half of which was after I was laid off from my job. At one point I was the strongest player on my server (S6), already a competitive server (See video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l3y6zOJtUM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9l3y6zOJtUM). There were people who had spent 3-5x as much as me and were still weaker because of suboptimal gameplay, but they could always spend more to catch up. This is not a brag, but rather an illustration of how rivalry between players at the top can be one of the strongest ways to motivate them to fork over more money. The amount of peer pressure from my clan leader to keep buying was insane. Eventually I told him I couldn't do it anymore. It was fun for awhile but I am still shocked that I still spent thousands of dollars that I really needed at a later time. I fault myself more than the game's system for those decisions. Sometimes one can forget the value of money until once again experiencing the effects of not having it. A lot of young professionals are making more money than they really need, and with the perception that they won't need it in the future. Therefore, there's a lot of people out there taking it for granted, and therefore not making it a second thought to spend on these pay to win mobile games. If you were to take away these mobile games, then this class of people would find some other equally stupid way to waste their money. In western society, there will never be a shortage of those possibilities.