Grinding was indeed a big issue for people who didn't spend any money on the game. And thats why the old BF had low player base. I playd the old BF for a few months, and only managed to get 2 UR card maybe.. ofc, not upgraded. And yes i spent some money on the game. I couldn't even finish my deck at the end, and not all my cards were fully upgraded. Then decided to take a break because that grinding felt really bad. After few months wanted to go back to BF and realized EA closed it.. My brother played the game for a longer period, but he didn't spend any money on it. And he had worse deck than me at the end. Grinding element in a RTS game is really bad. But well, that was EA's moneymilking grindfest system.