I just want to say with the costs of Energy shooting up the past week from 4000-6000 crowns to 8000-10000 crowns is, in my opinion, gimping us but If you bought CE with cash you only benefit (woooo 9000 crowns for 100 ce? that's pretty close to how much you earn in 1 T3 Amber Sun run, 9000-10000crowns?)
The high prices again imo just slow down progression (I'm already at T3 with 4-5* equipment because I bought $60 worth of CE waaay before the prices shot up)
You can still play the game forever though at high tier levels, run, buy CE with C, run again.
The jump in energy prices was triggered by availability of gates filled with Arenas. All the Tier 3 players can pull off the huge crowns and are willing to pay those prices. It really does gimp playability for the newer players right now.
I think if this was a released game with a much larger player base this would be occurring less. It's relatively easy to organize an effort to create the red only Arena gates organizing a much broader mass of gamers would prove a bit more difficult.
Also, it's been a while since a release that changed game play came through. I'd expect one of those to appear soon and shake things up in the Market (at least it did every other time I remember).